Beckett and Buddhism undertakes a twenty-first-century reassessment of the Buddhist resonances in Samuel Beckett's writing. These reverberations, as Angela Moorjani demonstrates, originated in his early reading of Schopenhauer. Drawing on letters and archives along with recent studies of Buddhist thought and Schopenhauer's knowledge of it, the book charts the Buddhist concepts circling through Beckett's visions of the 'human predicament' in a blend of tears and laughter. Moorjani offers an in-depth elucidation of texts that are shown to intersect with the negative and paradoxical path of the Buddha, which she sets in dialogue with Western thinking. She brings further perspectives from cognitive philosophy and science to bear on creative emptiness, the illusory 'I', and Beckett's probing of the writing process. Readers will benefit from this far-reaching study of one of the most acclaimed writers of the twentieth century who explored uncharted topologies in his fiction, theatre, and poetry.

Beckett and Buddhism, Angela Moorjani, Cambridge University Press, Paperback, 252 pages, $28.99

Angela Moorjani is Emerita Professor of French and Intercultural Pragmatics at the University of Maryland (UMBC). In her books she reflects on the multidimensional writings of Samuel Beckett and the effects of trauma and mourning on modernist writers and artists. Her latest book is Beckett and Buddhism (Cambridge University Press, 2021).