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In his controversial play, Fin de partie, Samuel Beckett holds a mirror to the post-war human condition:

“God damn you to hell, Sir, no, it’s indecent, there are limits! In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. Yes Sir, no less Sir, the WORLD! And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in six months!” (Tailor’s voice, scandalized.) “But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look – (disdainful gesture, disgustedly) — at the world — (pause) — and look — (loving gesture, proudly) — at my TROUSERS!” (Samuel Beckett, Endgame, London, Faber & Faber, 1958)

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Beckett was one of the most brilliant playwrights of the 20th century. He made us look around and witness just how broken the world really is.

Faced with the German occupation of France and confronted by what the Nazis were doing to his Jewish friends in 1941, Beckett joined a Paris-based cell of British SOE (Special Operations Executive). Beckett’s sacred theatre was intimately tied to his dangerous wartime activities. He narrowly escaped arrest by the Gestapo in Paris in August 1942, when so many of his cell were betrayed and deported to concentration camps.