Molloy

Molloy is made up of two parts. In the first, Molloy, an old man in his mother's room, tells how he traveled by bicycle, then by crutches, through a landscape of forests and roads, trying to reach her. In the second, Jacques Moran, a precise and pious agent, is ordered to find Molloy and gradually falls apart as he searches. Samuel Beckett wrote the book in French, in a voice of dark comedy, repetition and a stripped down account of consciousness.

It is a challenging book, best for readers who want to understand modernist and postwar fiction and are happy with fragmentary plots. It rewards patience with some of Beckett's funniest and bleakest passages.

Deep, inward-looking, contemplative, open-ended and thought-provoking; a demanding read.

Best for readers like The Literary Connoisseur. Which reader are you?