First American Edition of Samuel Beckett’s Malone Dies. 1956. First printing, published by Grove Press.

Malone Dies, #332 of 500 numbered copies, a near fine book with the original acetate jacket present but torn. Originally issued without a dust jacket. Tightly bound, clean pages.

Beckett hit his stride with a trilogy of early 1950s masterpieces: “Molloy,” “Malone Dies,” and “The Unnamable.” In these works, he abandons the usual elements of contemporary fiction—such as exposition, plot, and even paragraphs—to focus on consciousness itself. His portrayal of the pain of existence and the gradual descent into nonexistence is unmatched in its poetic, verbose precision.