Hamm: We're not beginning ...to ...to ...mean something? Clov: Mean something? You and I mean something? (from 'Endgame' by Samuel Beckett)Martin Esslin coined the phrase 'Theatre of the Absurd' in this ground-breaking book, and the term has become part of the language just as this book has become an indispensable part of any literature and drama library: the definitive study of the playwrights who have dramatised the fundamental absurdity of the human condition. In this readable and illuminating work - still a classic of theatre studies - Esslin shows how Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Pinter and others have confronted a world in which there is no communication and where man flounders in a void, cut off from his roots and shorn of all certainties.A seminal work (Independent) An exciting and stimulating book, a very useful reference work and a standard textbook (Literary Review)