Bertolt Brecht's status as one of the major playwrights of the twentieth century is largely uncontested. In addition to writing a significant body of plays that are performed all over the world, Brecht also developed in a number of theoretical writings his theory of "epic" or "dialectic" theater that he applied to the "model" productions of his own plays in the early 1950s. Furthermore, practically from the beginning of his literary career Brecht has been considered a poet of considerable power and originality; more recently, his prose fiction has attracted increased attention--although Brecht the prose fiction writer has not yet been fully recognized.

It is hardly an exaggeration, then, when Martin Esslin, author of the influential study Brecht: A Choice of Evils (1959) writes: "There can be little doubt that Bertolt Brecht is one of the most significant writers of this century." Esslin points out that Brecht had to...