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
9781350045026
Publisert
2020
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Bloomsbury UK
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter