MALONE DIES

First Calder and Boyars edition, first printing. Original red cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in dustwrapper. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the cloth and gilt sharp and bright, the contents clean throughout. In the fine, bright dustwrapper. Clipped and repriced by the publisher (£4.95 sticker to the front flap). A lovely copy of a scarce edition.

The shortest of the three novels originally written in French and later published as a trilogy, 'Malone Dies' (translated by the author) was the first of the three to appear in the UK, and the first of Beckett's works to be published by John Calder, who went on to publish all the author's prose works in the UK. Although Beckett thought of the three works as belonging together, the word 'trilogy' was added by Calder against the author's wishes; the designation, however, has stuck. This edition, issued by Calder and Boyars in 1975, was the first to appear with the iconic Calder jacket design. 'Malone Meurt' was written, Beckett later recalled in a letter to his bibliographers, immediately before 'En attendant Godot' and before 'L'Innommable', during an unusually productive period between 1946-51. Free-standing, but situated between 'Molloy' and 'The Unnamable' in the 'trilogy', it is narrated by the solitary, bedridden Malone: "I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all. Perhaps next month. Then it will be the month of April or of May. For the year is still young, a thousand little signs tell me so." During the time remaining he will attempt to tell stories, "I think I shall be able to tell myself four [...], each one on a different theme. One about a man, another about a woman, a third about a thing and finally one about an animal, a bird probably. I think that is everything." The novel cuts between the stories (that of the teenage Saposcat, son of the pig farmer Big Lambert, and Macmann, inmate of the House of Saint John of God asylum, are particular highlights) and the narrator's room. One of the great prose works of the century, 'Malone Dies' is also (not incidentally) one of the funniest.