{"product_id":"2026200013069-secondhand-brecht-a-biography","title":"Brecht: A Biography","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFew figures in twentieth-century theatre cast as long a shadow as Bertolt Brecht, and Klaus Völker's definitive Brecht: A Biography illuminates the full complexity of the man behind the legend — the radical playwright, the Marxist provocateur, and the restless exile whose tumultuous life was as dramatically charged as anything he put on stage. Translated by John Nowell, this authoritative work chronicles Brecht's journey from his bourgeois Augsburg origins through the cabaret-fuelled chaos of Weimar Berlin, his harrowing flight from Nazi Germany, and his controversial final years at the helm of the Berliner Ensemble in East Berlin, presenting a portrait of an artist who could never be separated from the political currents of his age.\n\nVölker writes with scholarly precision and literary flair, grounding his narrative in meticulous research while never losing sight of the human contradictions that made Brecht so compelling — his genius alongside his cruelty, his Communist convictions alongside his appetite for bourgeois comfort. The biography situates Brecht's theatrical innovations, particularly the alienation effect and epic theatre, within the broader upheavals of the twentieth century, arguing that his work remains as urgent and unsettling today as when it first scandalised audiences. For anyone who has ever sat in a darkened theatre and felt the ground shift beneath them, this is the essential account of how one man dared to reinvent the very purpose of the stage.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49203276808411,"sku":"2026200013069-SECONDHAND","price":20.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/155250d1-285b-410c-9a41-78f8297ae1d5.png?v=1788147256","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200013069-secondhand-brecht-a-biography","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}