Fiction. WATT was the beginning of Samuel Becket's post-war literary career, the fruition of the years in hiding in the Vaucluse mountains from the Gestapo, which also largely inspired WAITING FOR GODOT. But it remains, unlike the work that followed it, extremely Irish, a philosophical novel full of the grim humour that was already his trade-mark in such earlier fictions as MORE PRICKS THAN KICKS and MURPHY. The perambulations of WATT, especially in the home of the eccentric Mr. Knott, and the sketching of logic to elicit meaning, must be among the most comic inventions of modern literature. First published by the libertine Olympia Press in 1953 it has established itself as one of the most quoted and best-loved of Becket's novels. The typographical oddities and omissions are as Beckett left the text.

作者：［爱尔兰］萨缪尔·贝克特（1906—1989），爱尔兰著名戏剧家、小说家、诗人，荒诞派奠基人之一。1969年因其作品“以新的小说和戏剧的形式从现代人的窘困中获得崇高”而荣膺诺贝尔文学奖。

译者：曹波，湖南师范大学外国语学院副教授，上海外国语大学博士，主要从事荒诞小说及18世纪英国小说研究。姚忠，中南大学外国语学院讲师，主要从事荒诞小说及女性小说研究。