Malone, a decrepit old man, lies naked in his bed, scrawling bitter observations in an exercise book. He is fed on a bed-table, his chamber pot is emptied, he hooks items with his stick, he looks out of the window. He tells the story of a man, looked after by nurses, taken for an ill-fated picnic on an island in the sea. As his mind disintegrates, so does the novel . . .

Malone Dies is the second of the three great novels Samuel Beckett produced during his ‘frenzy of writing’ in the late 1940s. The others are Molloy and The Unnamable.