[1] The Unnamable is the final volume in Beckett's "Trilogy" of novels, which begins with Molloy and continues with Malone Dies.

[3][4] ...now it comes back to me, what it can possibly be, and where it can possibly come from, since all is silent here, and the walls thick, and how I manage, without feeling an ear on me, or a head, or a body, or a soul, how I manage, to do what, how I manage, it's not clear, dear dear, you say it's not clear, something is wanting to make it clear, I'll seek, what is wanting, to make everything clear, I'm always seeking something, it's tiring in the end, and it's only the beginning, how I manage, under such conditions, to do what I'm doing, what am I doing, I must find out what I'm doing, tell me what you're doing and I'll ask you how it's possible, I hear, you say I hear, and that I seek, it's a lie, I seek nothing, nothing any more, no matter...[5]The Unnamable consists entirely of a disjointed monologue from the perspective of an unnamed (presumably unnamable) and immobile protagonist: the narrator’s body is successively described as curled in the fetal position, as a limbless body stuck in a deep glass jar, and as a featureless egg-like creature.

[3][4] There is no concrete plot or setting, and it is debatable whether or not the other characters ("Mahood" [formerly "Basil"], "Madeleine" and "Worm") actually exist or whether they are facets of the narrator himself.

[5] According to Paul Foster, "The long paragraph that constitutes this novel is a form that reflects this relentlessness, an uninterrupted determination to bring the whole intractable [existential, spiritual] dilemma forward into the light and to reveal it for what it is.

Earl Kim's musical work, "Exercises en Route," composed 1963–70, sets passages from The Unnamable in its final movement, "Rattling On".