Paris 14th arrondissement, Rue Rémy-Dumoncel. A white nursing home called Third Spring. A lonely tree in the center of the courtyard. A resident of the nursing home with a dark face turned towards memories and a piercing gaze: Samuel Beckett. Memories intertwined in two languages, a memory full of war and witnessed deaths, relatives, friends, literary portraits, photo frames, unforgettable lines, a movie, games, games of an old mind and useless regrets. A life in flux from Ireland to France.

In The Third Spring, which won Maylis Besserie the Goncourt Prize for First Novels in 2020, the author rediscovers Beckett as a protagonist. As the novel accompanies the great Irishman on his final journey, it leaves the reader with a growing question.

How many springs can one fit in his past?

"The hero of the movie, that man, got rid of them. He tore them up with his big hands. With a sharp movement. Pieces of frozen paper multiplied under his murderous hands. Painful fragments. He sifted them one by one. The paper killer. First, he tore up his childhood that no longer existed. Then his wife. Here's the way backwards. All the way to graduation. What will be left at the end? Anything? A dog. A Joyce. Confetti."