A man lies in mud and darkness, repeating his life as he hears it, obscurely uttered by another voice. The noise of his panting fills his ears. The other voice is inside, but is itself the recollection of an earlier voice, heard 'on all sides'. The story is told in three stages, as of a journey undertaken by turns alone and accompanied. It is spoken throughout in brief unpunctuated paragraphs, in whose cadences the further recesses of a world inaugurated by Beckett's preceding novels (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) are consummately and movingly explored.

How It Is was originally published in French as Comment c'est, in 1961, and in Beckett's English translation in 1964.

she sits aloof ten yards fifteen yards she looks up looks at me says at last to herself all is well he is working

my head where is my head it rests on the table my hand trembles on the table she sees I am not sleeping the wind blows tempestuous the little clouds drive before it the table glides from light to darkness darkness to light

that's not all she stoops to her work again the needle stops in midstitch she straightens up and looks at me again she has only to call me by my name get up come and feel me but no