Waiting for Godot Author: [Ireland] Samuel Beckett Publisher: Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House

Samuel Beckett (April 13, 1906 - December 22, 1989) was an Irish writer. His main works include drama, novels and poetry, especially drama. He is an important representative of the absurd drama.

Born in Ireland, he came to Paris at an early age. After World War II, he stayed in France to engage in literary creation. At first, he mainly wrote novels, and later he mainly wrote plays. Waiting for Godot, which he published in 1952, was a huge success when it was staged in 1953. Since then, he has created many plays, mainly including The Last Game, Pantomime, The Last Tape, Happy Days, etc., all of which belong to the absurd drama.

In 1969, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his sublime artistic expression of human suffering in a new form of fiction and drama."

Yu Zhongxian is a researcher at the Institute of Foreign Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, former editor-in-chief of World Literature, and doctoral supervisor at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He is currently employed as a visiting professor at Xiamen University. He graduated from Peking University and studied in France, where he received a doctorate in literature from the University of Paris IV. He has been engaged in the translation, commentary, and research of French literary works for many years. He has translated and introduced novels, dramas, and poems by Nerval, Claudel, Apollinaire, Beckett, Simon, Robbe-Grillet, Sagan, Kundera, Le Clézio, Toussaint, and Ashnoz. He was awarded the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government.