Samuel Beckett ""La Fin"", or "The End"), not realizing that Beckett had only submitted the first half of the story; Simone de Beauvoir refused to publish the second part. Beckett also began to write his fourth novel, "Mercier et Camier", which was not published until 1970. The novel presaged his most famous work, the play "Waiting for Godot", which was written not long afterwards. More importantly, the novel was Beckett’s first long work that he wrote in French, the language of most of his subsequent works which were strongly supported by Jérôme Lindon director of his parisian publishing house Les Éditions de
Samuel Beckett agent and sent the manuscript to multiple producers until they met Roger Blin, the soon-to-be director of the play Blin's knowledge of French theatre and vision alongside Beckett knowing what he wanted the play to represent contributed greatly to its success. In a much-quoted article, the critic Vivian Mercier wrote that Beckett "has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice." The play was published in 1952