We had always suspected that Beckett's destitute characters, his black humor, his bleak one-liners, his cynical minimalism had to do with some form of trauma linked with wartime experiences, but no one had attempted to read the whole postwar production as a deployment of a phenomenology of trauma. Rhys Tranter is the first to use the whole gamut of protocols developed by trauma studies and bring them to bear on Beckett's canon from the forties to the eighties. The result is a highly rewarding book full of new insights, superb close readings, and poignant meditations on a time of wounds, yet open to a different future.

Rhys Tranter teaches modern and contemporary literature at Cardiff University. His work engages in many areas: continental philosophy, philosophy and literature, trauma, and ethics, among others. His writing has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, and he is coeditor of The Beckett Circle, the official newsletter of the Samuel Beckett Society. At RhysTranter.com, he asks writers and academics questions about contemporary issues in art, literature, philosophy, and popular culture.