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On 5 January 1953, in the Théâtre de Babylone, a small theatre on the Left Bank in Paris, two tramps waited on a nearly bare stage with a single tree for a man called Godot, who never came. Some of the audience walked out. The author, Samuel Beckett, was a Dubliner born in 1906 who had settled in Paris, fought in the French Resistance, and after the war switched from English to French. In the five years after 1945 he wrote the novels Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable and the play Waiting for Godot, and he translated almost all of it back into English himself. In 1969 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. This guide covers his 13 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 13 key books · 1938–1983 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Samuel Beckett’s best-known works are the play Waiting for Godot (1952), Endgame (1957), Krapp’s Last Tape (1958) and Happy Days (1961), and the three novels Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951) and The Unnamable (1953). This page lists 13 key books and 12 further works. Start with Waiting for Godot: it is short, and every later play and novel strips down something that is already in it.
Where to Start with Samuel Beckett
If you want his most famous play
→ Waiting for Godot (1952) — two tramps, one tree, and a man who never comes.
If you want a short play to read in one sitting
→ Krapp’s Last Tape (1958) — an old man, a tape recorder and his younger self.
If you want his novels
→ Molloy (1951) — the first book of the trilogy.
If you want the easiest way into his fiction
→ Murphy (1938) — his first published novel, still comic and fairly conventional.
13 Samuel Beckett Books, in Order
Murphy
Beckett’s first published novel, written in English and accepted after dozens of rejections. Murphy, an idler in London, likes to tie himself naked to a rocking chair to quiet his body and free his mind; his lover Celia wants him to find work, and he ends up as an attendant at a mental hospital. It is the most conventional and the most openly comic of his novels.
Molloy
Published in French by Les Éditions de Minuit in 1951 and in English, translated by Beckett with Patrick Bowles, in 1955. It has two halves: Molloy, a crippled vagrant, tells of a journey to find his mother; then Jacques Moran, a private detective, tells of his search for Molloy, which slowly reduces him to something like the man he is hunting. It is the first novel of the trilogy Beckett wrote in Paris between 1947 and 1950.
Malone Dies
First published in French as Malone meurt in 1951. Malone, an old man alone in a room and well past eighty, waits to die and passes the time telling himself stories, chiefly about a boy called Sapo who later becomes Macmann, while listing his few possessions. The narrative trails off as he does.
Waiting for Godot
Written in French in 1948–49 as En attendant Godot, published in 1952 and first staged in Paris on 5 January 1953. Vladimir and Estragon wait by a tree for Godot; Pozzo and his servant Lucky pass through; a boy says Godot will come tomorrow. The second act is a subtly different repeat of the first. The English premiere, directed by Peter Hall, was in London in 1955, and in a 1998 Royal National Theatre poll of more than 800 theatre professionals it was voted the most important English-language play of the 20th century.
Watt
Written in English during the Second World War, largely while Beckett was hiding from the Germans in Roussillon in the south of France, and not published until 1953. Watt enters the service of the mysterious Mr Knott and tries to make sense of his house through exhaustive, often absurdly long lists of permutations. It was the last of his longer works written in English.
The Unnamable
Published in French as L’Innommable in 1953, and written after Waiting for Godot. A voice without a body or a place, which at one point imagines itself as a limbless man kept in a jar, talks on and on about the earlier narrators and its own inability either to speak truly or to stop. It ends with the words “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”
Endgame
Written in French as Fin de partie and first performed, in French, at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 3 April 1957, directed by Roger Blin, who also played Hamm. Hamm, blind and unable to stand, sits in an armchair on castors; his servant Clov cannot sit; Hamm’s legless parents, Nagg and Nell, live in two dustbins. Beckett translated it into English himself.
Krapp’s Last Tape
Written in English for the Irish actor Patrick Magee and first performed at the Royal Court Theatre on 28 October 1958, as a curtain raiser to Endgame. On his 69th birthday Krapp listens to a tape he recorded on his 39th, in which his younger self mocks an even younger one, and lingers over a memory of a woman in a punt.
How It Is
Published in French as Comment c’est in 1961. A narrator crawls through endless mud in the dark, dragging a sack of tins, and tells his story in three parts: before Pim, with Pim, and after Pim. It is written in short unpunctuated blocks of text, a form Beckett used to suggest a voice heard in fragments.
Happy Days
Written in English and first performed at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York on 17 September 1961, directed by Alan Schneider, with Ruth White, who won an Obie, as Winnie. Winnie is buried to her waist in a mound of earth in the first act and to her neck in the second, and keeps up a cheerful routine of chatter, while her husband Willie stays mostly out of sight.
Not I
Written in 1972 and first performed at Lincoln Center in New York on 22 November 1972, with Jessica Tandy. On a black stage, only a mouth is lit, about eight feet above the floor, pouring out a jumbled account of a woman of about seventy who was abandoned at birth and lived a loveless life. Billie Whitelaw played Mouth in the London premiere at the Royal Court in 1973.
Company
A short prose work in which a voice comes to someone lying on his back in the dark and recalls moments of a life that seems close to Beckett’s own childhood in Ireland, while the text keeps asking whether the voice and the listener are inventions to keep him company. It is the first of three late prose pieces later collected as Nohow On.
Worstward Ho
His last major prose work, written in English in a language stripped almost to single words. It contains the passage “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”, which is now widely quoted as a motto about perseverance; in the text it is followed by a much darker paragraph about failing worse.
In What Order to Read Samuel Beckett
Read the three novels Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable in that order: they were written in sequence, each voice is barer than the last, and The Unnamable refers back to the earlier narrators. Nothing else needs to be read in a set order.
Publication order does show a clear direction. The early English work (Murphy, Watt) is comic and crowded; the post-war French work cuts away plot and setting; the late plays and prose reduce the stage or the page to a mouth, a voice in the dark, a few words. The plays are short, so many readers start there and come to the novels later.
A reading path
1. Waiting for Godot (1952)
2. Krapp’s Last Tape (1958)
3. Endgame (1957)
4. Molloy (1951)
5. Company (1980)
Everything Else Samuel Beckett Published
Beyond the 13 key books: 12 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Early work
4
4 books · 1930–1935
- 1930Whoroscopea poem about Descartes, his first separately published work
- 1931Prousta critical essay
- 1934More Pricks Than Kickslinked short stories about Belacqua Shuah, a Dublin student
- 1935Echo’s Bones and Other Precipitateshis first collection of poems
Other prose
5
5 books · 1955–1992
- 1955Stories and Texts for Nothingpost-war novellas and thirteen short prose texts, first published in French as Nouvelles et textes pour rien
- 1970Mercier and Camierhis first novel in French, written from 1946
- 1981Ill Seen Ill Saidan old woman in a cabin; the middle work of Nohow On
- 1988Stirrings Stillhis last prose piece
- 1992Dream of Fair to Middling Womenhis first novel, written in 1932 and published after his death
Other plays
3
3 books · 1957–1976
- 1957All That Falla radio play for the BBC
- 1963Playthree heads in urns, speaking when a light hits them
- 1976Footfallsa woman pacing a strip of floor
The years · 1906–1989
Quick facts about Samuel Beckett
- Known for
- Samuel Beckett is known for stripping drama and fiction down to voices waiting, remembering and failing to stop talking, above all in Waiting for Godot.
- 1906
- Born in Foxrock, Dublin
- 1928
- Moves to Paris and meets James Joyce
- 1945
- Awarded the Croix de Guerre
- 1953
- Waiting for Godot opens in Paris
- 1969
- Nobel Prize in Literature
- 1989
- Dies in Paris, aged 83
- Born
- 13 April 1906, Foxrock, Dublin
- Died
- 22 December 1989, Paris; buried in Montparnasse Cemetery
- Education
- Trinity College Dublin, French, Italian and English, 1923–1927
- Languages
- Wrote in English and, from the late 1940s, mainly in French, translating his own work
- War
- Courier for the Resistance network Réseau Gloria; Croix de Guerre, 1945
- Married
- Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil, his companion since 1938, in 1961
- Honours
- Nobel Prize in Literature, 1969
The red mark is 1953: the Paris premiere of Waiting for Godot.
How Samuel Beckett Writes: Less and Less
Beckett began as a disciple of James Joyce, whom he met in Paris in 1928 and helped with research for Finnegans Wake. His early books, More Pricks Than Kicks and Murphy, are dense with allusion and jokes in Joyce’s manner. After the war he went the other way, cutting plot, setting and named places until what is left is a voice and its circumstances.
Switching to French was part of that. Writing in a second language kept him from the ease of his own, and the trilogy and Waiting for Godot were all written in French first. He then translated them into English himself, often changing them as he went, so that most of his major works exist in two versions by the same author.
In the theatre the same reduction is literal: two men and a tree, a woman buried in earth, a lit mouth. His stage directions are exact about movements, pauses and lighting, and his estate still licenses productions on condition that they are followed. The plays are often grouped under Martin Esslin’s label “Theatre of the Absurd”, a label that has led to him being described, wrongly, as an existentialist.
Frequently asked questions about Samuel Beckett’s books
How many books has Samuel Beckett written?
He published novels, plays, short prose, poems and criticism over more than sixty years, many of them very short. This page lists 25: the 13 key novels, plays and prose works above, from Murphy (1938) to Worstward Ho (1983), and 12 further works, from the poem Whoroscope (1930) to the posthumous novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women (1992).
What are Samuel Beckett’s books in order?
Murphy (1938), Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951), Waiting for Godot (1952), Watt (1953), The Unnamable (1953), Endgame (1957), Krapp’s Last Tape (1958), How It Is (1961), Happy Days (1961), Not I (1972), Company (1980) and Worstward Ho (1983).
Where should I start with Samuel Beckett?
With Waiting for Godot. It is short, it is funny on the page as well as on stage, and the later plays and novels develop what is already in it. For his fiction, start with Molloy, or with Murphy if you want something more conventional first.
What is Samuel Beckett’s most famous book?
Waiting for Godot, published in French in 1952 and first staged in Paris in 1953. In a 1998 Royal National Theatre poll of more than 800 theatre professionals it was voted the most important English-language play of the 20th century.
Who is Godot in Waiting for Godot?
The play never says. Godot does not appear; a boy twice tells Vladimir and Estragon he will come tomorrow. Beckett declined to explain what the play was about beyond its text, and readings range from God to death to anything people put off.
Should I read Beckett’s trilogy in order?
Yes. Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951) and The Unnamable (1953) were written in sequence between 1947 and 1950, each narrator is more reduced than the last, and The Unnamable refers back to the earlier ones.
Why did Samuel Beckett write in French?
He settled in Paris in the late 1930s and, after the war, began writing mainly in French; Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable, Waiting for Godot and Endgame were all written in French first. He then translated nearly all of his work into English himself. Some later works, including Krapp’s Last Tape and Happy Days, were written in English.
When did Samuel Beckett win the Nobel Prize?
In 1969, “for his writing, which – in new forms for the novel and drama – in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation”. He heard the news on holiday in Tunis; his wife Suzanne called it a “catastrophe”.
Can women be cast in Waiting for Godot?
It has been contested. Beckett himself took legal action against a Dutch company in 1988 for casting women, and in 1991 a French court allowed a female cast at Avignon only if an objection from his representative was read before each performance. His estate, which holds the rights, still opposes productions that depart from his instructions, and some all-female productions have been cancelled, including one at an Ohio college in 2019.
Was Samuel Beckett in the French Resistance?
Yes. From 1940 he worked as a courier for the network Réseau Gloria; when it was betrayed in 1942 he and Suzanne fled to Roussillon in the south of France, where he wrote much of Watt. He received the Croix de Guerre in 1945 and called his Resistance work “boy scout stuff”.
Footnotes
- Samuel Beckett — Wikipedia
- The Nobel Prize in Literature 1969 — NobelPrize.org
- Waiting for Godot premieres in Paris — HISTORY.com
- Molloy (novel) — Wikipedia
- Krapp’s Last Tape — Wikipedia
- Beckett and female casts of Waiting for Godot — IrishCentral
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
— Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho (1983)
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