These are less tidy and more volatile than Brecht’s later canonical plays.

Their contradictions are part of the attraction: Marxism collides with nihilism, satire with melodrama, and political analysis with the sheer theatrical pleasure of watching a social order misbehave.  It's abrasive, expressionist, politically unstable and fascinated by people who turn conflict into a private religion. Across In the Jungle of Cities, Drums in the Night and Roundheads and Peakheads, capitalism appears less as an abstract system than as a pressure entering speech, desire, family life and the nervous system.

A useful volume for readers interested in Brecht’s development, interwar European theatre and the stage as a machine for making ideology visible.

Grove Press, Evergreen Black Cat edition, 1966 third printing. Vintage paperback with tanning, rubbing and general shelf wear; binding sound.