Samuel Beckett
Irish
Dramatist. His plays expressed the power of nameless and sourceless emotions (perhaps with an emphasis on anxiety), the power of silence (especially in a stage setting), and the general absurdity of life. An Irishman who chose to live in France, he wrote in both English and French, but his most famous works, including Waiting for Godot, were written in his adopted tongue. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.