Samuel Beckett's First Love and Company

We have selected this volume comprising of the two texts that have been translated into Arabic from the French by Fawzia Alashmawi

First Love is a short story by Samuel Beckett, written in 1946 and first published in its original French version in 1970 and, in Beckett's English translation, in 1973. The narrator tells of his discovery on a park bench (where he loitered after becoming homeless upon the death of his father) by a prostitute who takes him in, and of their strange "union," leading to the birth of a child and the narrator's abandonment of both.

Company is a novella by the author, written in English and published by Calder Publishing in 1979. It was translated into French by the author and published by Les Éditions de Minuit in 1980. Company illustrates clearly the dilemma of the modern 20th century human, an existential crisis in which life's "purpose" seems entirely arbitrary.

Samuel Beckett's First Love and Company discussion on Zoom