Klaus Völker’s Brecht: A Biography traces the life of Bertolt Brecht as a restless political and artistic operator moving through exile, war, Marxism, theatre, collaboration, and contradiction.

Brecht emerges here as both theorist and tactician: a playwright obsessed with form, but equally with power, labour, and the mechanics of belief itself. Within, Brecht’s art becomes from the century around him. Cabaret culture, Weimar instability, fascism, Hollywood exile, East German socialism — the book maps the pressures that produced epic theatre rather than treating the plays as isolated intellectual achievements. A deep and thorough study of someone constantly engineering ways to make audiences see the world differently.

1978 English-language Seabury Press edition in hardcover with dust jacket. Early English translation of Völker’s major Brecht biography. Jacket shows light rubbing and minor edge wear, particularly at lower corners; interior clean with firm binding.