Collected stories

Everyone knows that Bertolt Brecht was one of the great twentieth century innovators in theater - the literary-theatrical equivalent of a Picasso or Stravinsky - but the playwright was also a dazzling writer of stories. Storytelling permeated his art as a dramatist; fundamentally in his plays he was a storyteller. In this volume, reprinted for the Brecht centenary, the joint editors of Brecht's work in English have collected the complete short stories, including the prize-winning "The Monster," and the fragmentary memoir ghost-written by Brecht, "Life Story of the Boxer Samson-Korner." Brecht scholars Marc Silberman and Shuhsi Kao have contributed a new introduction and brought the original editorial notes up to date with the latest scholarship.