Published in English for the first time, Refugee Conversations is a
delightful work that reveals Brecht as a master of comic satire.
Written swiftly in the opening years of the Second World War, the
dialogues have an urgent contemporary relevance to a Europe once again
witnessing populations on the move. The premise is simple: two
refugees from Nazi Germany meet in a railway cafe and discuss the
current state of the world. They are a bourgeois Jewish physicist and
a left-leaning worker. Their world views, their voices and their
social experience clash horribly, but they find they have unexpected
common ground – especially in their more recent experience of the
surreal twists and turns of life in exile, the bureaucracy, and the
pathetic failings of the societies that are their unwilling hosts.
Their conversations are light and swift moving, the subjects under
discussion extremely various: beer, cigars, the Germans' love of
order, their education and experience of life, art, pornography,
politics, 'great men', morality, seriousness, Switzerland, America ...
despite the circumstances of both characters there is a wonderfully
whimsical serendipity about their dialogue, the logic and the
connections often delightfully absurd. This edition features a full
introduction and notes by Professor Tom Kuhn (St Hugh's College,
University of Oxford, UK).
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781350045019
Publisert
2019
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
Methuen Drama
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter