The Capital of the Ruins

Saint-Lô in Summer 1944

"The Capital of the Ruins" is a short piece of reportage by Samuel Beckett written in 1946. Originally written for broadcast by Irish radio, it deals with the Irish hospital in St. Lô. The title of the piece derives from a booklet of photographs of the bombed-out city entitled St. Lô, Capitale des Ruines, 5 et 7 Juin 1944.

The text is dated 10 June 1946 signed by Samuel Beckett, but there remains a controversy whether it was broadcast or not. It was discovered among the archives of Radio Telefís Éireann in 1983 and published in 1986 by Eoin O'Brien in The Beckett Country, and later that same year in As No Other Dare Fail: For Samuel Beckett on His 80th Birthday by His Friends and Admirers. It is also collected in Beckett's Complete Short Prose 1929–1989, published in 1995.

Samuel Beckett

Plays

Theatre	Human Wishes Eleutheria Waiting for Godot Act Without Words I Act Without Words II Endgame Krapp's Last Tape Rough for Theatre I Rough for Theatre II Happy Days Play Come and Go Breath Not I That Time Footfalls Neither A Piece of Monologue Rockaby Ohio Impromptu Catastrophe What Where

Radio	All That Fall From an Abandoned Work Embers The Old Tune Rough for Radio I Rough for Radio II Words and Music Cascando

Television	Eh Joe Beginning To End Ghost Trio ... but the clouds ... Quad I + II Nacht und Träume Beckett Directs Beckett

Screen	Film

Novels

Short stories

"Assumption"
"Sedendo et Quiescendo"
"Text"
"Echo's Bones"
"A Case in a Thousand"
"First Love"
"From an Abandoned Work"
"The Image"
"All Strange Away"
"Imagination Dead Imagine"
"Enough"
"Ping"
"Lessness"
"The Lost Ones"
"Fizzles"
"Heard in the Dark 1"
"Heard in the Dark 2"
"One Evening"
"As the story was told"
"The Cliff"
"neither"
"Stirrings Still"
Company
Ill Seen Ill Said
"Worstward Ho"

Short story collections

Non-fiction

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