Malone Dies
First edition (French)
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| Author | Samuel Beckett |
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| Original title | Malone Meurt |
| Translator | Samuel Beckett |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Series | "The Trilogy" |
| Publisher | Les Éditions de Minuit |
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Publication date
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1951 |
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Published in English
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1956 |
| Preceded by | Molloy |
| Followed by | The Unnamable |
Malone Dies is a novel by Samuel Beckett. It was first published in 1951, in French, as Malone meurt, and later translated into English by the author.
The second novel in Beckett's "Trilogy" (beginning with Molloy and ending with The Unnamable). Along with the other two novels that compose the trilogy, it marked the beginning of Beckett's most significant writing, where the questions of language and the fundamentals of constructing a non-traditional narrative became a central idea in his work. One does not get a sense of plot, character development, or even setting in this novel, as with most of his subsequent writing (e.g., Texts for Nothing, Fizzles, and How It Is). Malone Dies can be seen as the point in which Beckett took another direction with his writing.
Malone Dies contains the famous line, "Nothing is more real than nothing", (New York: Grove, 1956; p. 16) – a metatextual echo of Democritus' "Naught is more real than nothing" that appears in Beckett's first published novel Murphy (1938).
Malone is an old man who lies naked in bed in either asylum or hospital—he is not sure which. Most of his personal effects have been taken from him, though he has retained some: his exercise book, brimless hat, and pencil. He alternates between writing on his own situation and on that of a boy named Sapo. When he reaches the point in the story where Sapo becomes a man, he changes Sapo's name to Macmann, finding Sapo a ludicrous name. Soon after, Malone admits to having killed six men, but seems to think it's not a big deal, particularly the last: a total stranger whom he cut across the neck with a razor.
Eventually, Macmann falls over in mud and is taken to an institution called St. John's of God. There he is provided with an attendant nurse: an elderly, thick-lipped woman named Moll, with crosses of bone on either ear representing the two thieves crucified with Jesus on Good Friday, and a crucifix carved on her tooth representing Jesus. The two eventually begin a stumbling sexual affair, but after a while she does not return, and he learns that she has died.
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