Mr. Samuel Beckett, an Irish Writer, was to-day [October 23] awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize for literature. The Swedish Academy said it awarded Mr. Beckett the prize “for his writing which — in new forms for the novel and drama — in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation.” Among his most famous works are the plays ‘Ken Attendant Godot,’ (Waiting for Godot), written in 1952, and ‘Oh Le Beaux Jours,’ (Oh, The Good Days), written in 1963. He is the second Irishman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, the other being the poet W. B. Yeats (1923). Professor E. T. Waltson, also Irish, won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1951. Though he was born in Dublin, in 1906, most of Mr. Beckett’s works were written in French. For two years, 1928-29, he was a teacher of English at the French school, Ecole Normale Superieure and afterwards became a close friend and translator of another famous Irish writer, James Joyce. He has been in France since 1938. The literature prize amounts to 375,000 Swedish Crowns (about Rs. 6,75,000). It will be awarded by King Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden in a ceremony here [Stockholm] on December 10.
