Moments for Nothing

Elin Diamond, author of Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theatre:
With passion and deep erudition, Gabriele Schwab situates Samuel Beckett in our “end times” of pandemic and climate catastrophe. Here we encounter afresh the writer’s desolate landscapes, dark wit, and ghostly whispers. Here we gratefully consume, alongside his lonely characters, a typically Beckettian meal of despair and hope.

Peter Boxall, author of The Prosthetic Imagination: A History of the Novel as Artificial Life:
As a guide to Beckett’s work, Moments for Nothing is indispensable, but it is also much more than this. Mixing literary criticism with memoir and a compelling account of personal loss and mourning, this is a book unlike any other. What holds together its various elements is a moving and generous tribute to the transformative experience of reading—in which an impassioned love of Beckett’s writing gives shape and meaning to a scholarly life.