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Samuel Beckett and James Joyce

Two of Ireland's most renowned literary figures, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, were both drawn to Paris over the course of their careers. James Joyce, the avant-garde poet and novelist, spent almost 20 years in Paris.
It was in Paris that Joyce finished one of his most influential works "Ulysses", the detailed and affectionate portrait of Dublin life. The novel was published by Sylvia Beach's famous Rive Gauche bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, in 1922. Joyce influenced the playwright Samuel Beckett, who spent a significant part of his adult life in Paris, and wrote in both English and French. Beckett, famous for his sombre and tragicomic portrayal of human nature, was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1969 for pioneering a new form of the novel and drama. Both authors shared the modernist principles that inspired the foundation of UNESCO, and are therefore presented to you here in Paris, in the city that inspired their works.