Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) is one of the most famous representatives of avant-garde literature of the twentieth century, winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize. In terms of the richness of his words, he is compared to Joyce, and in terms of his ability to show the futility and hopelessness of human existence - with Kafka. "More bark than bite" - one of the writer's early novels - is a series of short stories, in the center of which are the life vicissitudes of Belacqua Shua. The characters in the novel are a kind of panopticon of personalities incredible in their absurdity. Beckett, as it were, dissects the heroes, exposing the unattractive, nasty, but sometimes funny sides of their souls, doing this with sympathy and ironic tenderness. The novel is permeated with some special, dark humor. In it, funny situations brought to the point of absurdity, as a rule, end in tragedy...Beckett was an incredibly erudite person, so his novels are full of all sorts of allusions, hints, references to texts that the reader may not even have an idea about.