The Life and Lies of Bertolt Brecht - Tapa blanda

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Backed up by previously unpublished papers and interviews with Brecht's colleagues and many lovers, this biography argues that Brecht was not in fact the author of the plays which have given him his iconic stature. "Mother Courage", "The Threepenny Opera" and "The Good Person of Szechuan", to name but a few of "his" most popular plays, were written (Fuegi calculates at least 80% of them) in a sex-for-text scheme by his mistresses, none of whom have ever received any recognition. Fuegi shows Brecht to have been personally offensive, politically slippery, sexually deranged, racist, an anti-Semite, a plagiarist, and mesmeric at the same time. Weaving together history and biography, the book offers encounters with Hitler the set designer, Kurt Weill, Charles Laughton (who lent Brecht his limo when he went to Hollywood), Rosa Luxemburg, Goebbels (who made up a third in a love triangle), Isherwood and Walter Benjamin.

Contraportada

In this first full biography of Bertolt Brecht, John Fuegi presents a devastating demystification of one of the giants of modern theatre. Drawing on previously unpublished correspondence and diaries made available to the author by Brecht’s widow and son, on interviews and intelligence files, Fuegi reveals a lifetime of personal and political deception.

Brecht, a misogynist, plagiarist and anti-Semite, possessed extraordinary charisma which dazzled women and men alike; his genius at masterminding creativity, his mesmerizing charm allured such luminaries as Kurt Weill, Auden, Isherwood, and Charles Laughton. But Fuegi brilliantly shows that Brecht’s written contribution to his own supposed 'oeuvre' was slim: as much as eighty percent of works such as 'The Threepenny Opera', which have given Brecht his stature as an icon, were written in a ‘sex-for-text’ scheme by other writers, particularly Elisabeth Hauptmann, but also Grete Steffin and Ruth Berlau – three of his lovers – none of whom have received appropriate recognition until the publication of John Fuegi’s utterly compelling book.

“In 'The Life and Lies of Bertolt Brecht', John Fuegi has produced one of the most important critical studies of the century.”
JOHN SIMON, critic for 'Wall Street Journal'

“A fascinating, vivid and compelling read.”
ELON SALMON, 'Yorkshire Post'

“This account breaks the mould. The charting of Brecht’s Moscow exile and his silence in the face of the purges which annihilated friends and lovers is more thorough than in any other work I have come across on the subject.”
ANNE MCELVOY, 'The Times'

“Brecht scholar John Fuegi shatters all our assumptions about the premier theatrical artist of the twentieth century.”
LEE WOCHNER, 'Los Angeles Times'