This book contests the position of 'insularity' frequently ascribed to Carlo Emilio Gadda and Samuel Beckett by critical consensus, situating these two contemporary authors at the heart of the debate of late European modernism, and rethinks some of Gadda's plurilingual and macaronic features.

While the writing of Carlo Emilio Gadda (1893-1973) is renowned for its linguistic and narrative proliferation, the best-known works of Samuel Beckett (1906-89) are minimalist, with a clear fondness for subtraction and abstraction.