Beckett was born in Dublin (of Protestant middle-class parents), but lived for much of his life in France, including the years of the Second World War, the German occupation, and the collaborationist Vichy Government. He knew some of the twentieth century’s nastiness from within. Firmly a member of the inter- and post-war avant-garde, Beckett lived in obscure self-imposed exile in Paris until the success of his plays Waiting for Godot (1952/1954) and Endgame (1957/1958) won him international fame. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Beckett’s work is unusual in that he wrote both in French and English. The French versions of most of his fiction pre-date the English ones, and often there are noticeable and meaning-filled differences between the two. Beckett published his first piece of short fiction, “Assumption,” in 1929, and he continued to work in the short form until shortly before his death. The three stories in Stirrings Still were published in 1988. His most…