Written over three months in 1946, Mercier and Camier was Beckett's first post-war work, and his first novel in French. He came to regard it as a practice piece, and set it aside to write his trilogy. Mercier et Camier was finally published in 1970, and in Beckett's English translation four years later. The eponymous heroes tramp around a city, then out of it, then back again. They are aimless, but there is something elusive that they should be doing. They arrange meetings, they drink, they argue, they discuss being shot of each other. They are preoccupied by the weather, by provisions, by a raincoat, by an umbrella, by a bicycle...