"In the first part of this book, Beckett, a notably reclusive man, talks candidly with his official biographer, James Knowlson, about his family, his youth, his school years in Dublin, his early life in Paris as lecteur at the famed Ecole Normale Superieure, his friendship with James Joyce, his work in the French resistance movement during the Nazi occupation, his precipitous flight from Paris when his involvement was discovered by the Gestapo, his clandestine years in the Vaucluse region of southern France, his postwar volunteer work with the Irish Red Cross Hospital in Saint-Lo, and his return to Paris in the late 1940s to resume his literary life." "In the second part, friends and colleagues share their memories of Beckett as a schoolboy, a teacher, a struggling young writer, and a sudden success in 1953 with the appearance of Waiting for Godot, which propelled him from virtual unknown to world-renowned. Actors with whom he worked, including Hume Cronyn, Jean Martin, Jessica Tandy, and Billie Whitelaw, relate their experiences; fellow playwrights and authors Edward Albee, Paul Auster, E. M. Cioran, J. M. Coetzee, Eugene Ionesco, Edna O'Brien, and Tom Stoppard speak of his work and its influence on theirs. One entire chapter is devoted to Beckett as director, for as time went on Beckett, first modestly, then authoritatively, oversaw the direction of many of his plays in France, Germany, and England."--BOOK JACKET.