It has been generally believed that Beckett's oeuvre is a stranger to any political preoccupation. In virtue of the axiom ‘to be apolitical is to be right-wing’ inflexible members of the doctrinal Left even attempted to pass Beckett off as a writer of the Right. More subtle than these, Cioran was correct to see him as ‘one of those who consider that history is a dimension through which man must pass’. Alas, here is yet another self-evident truth that will need to be revised! Lately we have seen him take the side of certain individuals: Arrabal, Vaclav Havel and even Jack Lang! His recent dramatic works, like Catastrophe and Quoi où [What Where] are the politically engaged works of an author who fled from politically engaged literature; they are the most highly political plays of the recent period.