An Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.

He is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. He was strongly influenced by James Joyce and is usually considered one of the last modernists, although as an inspiration to many later writers he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists.