Originally published in 1971, this book elucidates Beckett's work in the light of his concern with literary form. This is seen as an increasingly compressed and dense medium for the purer and purer statement of his view of man's existence, and Beckett's Man is seen as the medium for the articulation of a view of the world which is both comically cruel and anti-theological, but not atheist. The book discusses his work as a novelist and playwright - his best-known play, Waiting for Godot, being seen in the context of his many other important plays, and more than twenty years of previous writing.