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Novel by Samuel Beckett

Molloy is a novel by Samuel Beckett first written in French and published by Paris based Les Éditions de Minuit in 1951. The English translation, published in 1955, is by Beckett and Patrick Bowles.

Molloy is the first of three novels initially written in Paris between 1947 and 1950; this trio, which includes Malone Dies and The Unnamable, is collectively referred to as 'The Trilogy' or 'the Beckett Trilogy'. Beckett wrote all three books in French and then, aside from some collaborative work on Molloy with Patrick Bowles, served entirely as his own English language translator; he did the same for most of his plays. As Paul Auster explains, "Beckett’s renderings of his own work are never literal, word by word transcriptions. They are free, highly inventive adaptations of the original text—or, perhaps more accurately, 'repatriations' from one language to the other, from one culture to the other. In effect, he wrote every book twice, and each version bears its own indelible mark." The three thematically related books are dark existentialist comedies "whose ostensible subject is death", but, as Salman Rushdie asserts, "are in fact books about life, the lifelong battle of life against its shadow, life shown near battle’s end, bearing its lifetime of scars". and as Benjamin Kunkel notes, they "[have] become famous in the history of fiction because of what is left out: the usual novelistic apparatus of plot, scenes, and characters. Here, it seems, is the novelistic equivalent of abstract painting." Novelist Tim Parks, writing in The Telegraph, described its influence on him: "Molloy entirely changed my sense of what could be done with literature. You have a wonderfully engaging, comic voice remembering distant events in the narrator's life – an attempt to find his mother to ask her for money – yet as you read, every ordinary assumption one has about novels is stripped away from you, the setting, the identity of the characters, the time scheme, the reality of events themselves. In the end, nothing is certain but that the voice will go on trying to put a life together and make sense of it until death calls time on the tale." Comparing Molloy with the novels that preceded it, The New York Times wrote that the experience was "to marvel anew at the velocity and drive of the prose. The energy is suddenly urgent and channeled into an exploration of an inner landscape, a passionate and obsessive investigation of being." In an interview, Brian Evenson said: "I tend to think contemporary American fiction would be more interesting if more writers knew Molloy". Vladimir Nabokov considered it one of his favorite of Beckett's books. Passages from the novel are spoken by a possessed character in Annihilation, directed by Alex Garland and based on the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer.

Molloy includes references to a number of Beckett's other works, especially the characters, who are revealed as fictional characters in the same manner as Molloy and Moran: "Oh the stories I could tell you if I were easy. What a rabble in my head, what a gallery of moribunds. Murphy, Watt, Yerk, Mercier and all the others." (Part II)

Imagery from Dante is present throughout the novel, as in much of Beckett's work. In Part I, Molloy compares himself to Belacqua from the Purgatorio, Canto IV and Sordello from the Purgatorio, Canto VI. There are also Molloy's frequent references to the various positions of the sun, which calls to mind similar passages in the Purgatorio. Belacqua is also the name of the central character in Beckett's More Pricks Than Kicks.

French original: Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1951. English: 1955, Paris: Olympia Press, paperback; NY: Grove Press. Included in Three Novels. NY: Grove Press, 1959. In The Grove Centenary Edition, Vol. II: Novels. NY: Grove Press, 2006.

A reading of selected passages from Part 1 of Molloy was broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 10 December 1957, and repeated on 13 December. Beckett selected the passages, which were read by the actor Patrick Magee, and incidental music, performed by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, was composed by Samuel's cousin John S. Beckett. The producer was Donald McWhinnie.

Individual unabridged audiobooks of the entire Beckett Trilogy were released by Naxos Audiobooks between 2003 and 2005. Molloy (2003) is read by actors Dermot Crowley and Sean Barrett, who each deliver one of the book's two monologues. Malone Dies (2004) and The Unnamable (2005) are read by Sean Barrett. The production of Molloy has been praised for its accessibility: "The distinct readings lend the book a dramatic presence, playfully yet skillfully rendering all the characters to illuminate Beckett's irony. So while in print it seems dark, even absurd, in audio this work takes on the full richness of comedy, probably as Beckett, preeminently a dramatist, intended."