Samuel Beckett's long-standing friend, James Knowlson, recreates

Beckett's youth in Ireland, his studies at Trinity College, Dublin in

the early 1920s and from there to the Continent, where he plunged into

the multicultural literary society of late-1920s Paris. The biography

throws new light on Beckett's stormy relationship with his mother, the

psychotherapy he received after the death of his father and his crucial

relationship with James Joyce. There is also material on Beckett's

six-month visit to Germany as the Nazi's tightened their grip.;The book

includes unpublished material on Beckett's personal life after he chose

to live in France, including his own account of his work for a

Resistance cell during the war, his escape from the Gestapo and his

retreat into hiding.;Obsessively private, Beckett was wholly committed

to the work which eventually brought his public fame, beginning with

the controversial success of ''Waiting for Godot'' in 1953, and

culminating in the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in

1969.;James Knowlson is the general editor of ''The Theatrical Notebooks

of Samuel Beckett''.