German Diaries

"Slept well, with vivid tooth dream. Shat 4 times today. Ate too much lunch."

Samuel Beckett only kept a diary for a prolonged period once in his life--on his journey through Third Reich Germany from September 1936 to April 1937.

These six notebooks, rich in intimate details (cultural, gastronomical, scatological), offer a unique opportunity to become Beckett's traveling companion. We accompany him on hunts for lodgings amidst maze-like streets, drinking beers in dusty Berlin boulevards, attempting to write, and mournfully learning German.

Beckett also visits an astonishing range of artworks in museums, galleries, churches and private collections--many of which have been confiscated by the regime as "degenerate." And through toxic encounters with locals--often "appallingly Nazi"--he illuminates the antisemitic violence poisoning the country. Despite feeling that "this absurd diary with its lists of pictures, serves no purpose, is only the act of an obsessional neurotic," these pages give us a rare insight into Beckett's youthful personality and his development as an artist.

With extensive commentary by editors Mark Nixon and Oliver Lubrich, German Diaries is the last significant body of writing by the Nobel Prize winner yet to be published. It is not only a landmark cultural moment, but a magnetic reading experience.