'I was just a regular idiot, a nutcase, a show-off and all that. Nothing to cry about. Seriously'

Edgar W., teenage dropout, unrequited lover, unrecognized genius - and dead - tells the story of his brief, spectacular life.

It is the story of how he rebels against the petty rules of communist East Germany to live in an abandoned summer house, with just a tape recorder and a battered copy of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther for company. Of his passionate love for the dark-eyed, unattainable kindergarten teacher Charlie. And of how, in a series of calamitous events (involving electricity and a spray paint machine), he meets his untimely end.

Absurd, funny and touching, this cult German bestseller is both a satire on life in the GDR and a hymn to youthful freedom.

"Brecht on Performance: Messingkauf and Modelbooks" presents a selection of Brecht's principal writings for directors and theatre practitioners, and is suitable for acting schools, directors, actors, students and teachers of Theatre Studies. Through these texts Brecht provides a general practical approach to acting and to realising texts for the stage that crystallises and makes concrete many of the more theoretical aspects of his other writing.The volume is in two parts. The first features an entirely new commentated edition of Brecht's dialogues and essays about the practice of theatre, known as the "Messingkauf," or "Buying Brass," including the 'Practice Pieces' for actors (rehearsal scenes for classics by Shakespeare and Schiller). The second contains rehearsal and production records from Brecht's work on productions of" Life of Galileo," "Antigone," "Mother Courage" and others.Edited by an international team of Brecht scholars and including an essay by director and teacher Di Trevis examining the practical application of these texts for theatres and actors today, "Brecht on Performance" is a wonderfully rich resource. The text is illustrated with over 30 photographs from the "Modelbooks."

"Brecht on Performance: Messingkauf and Modelbooks" presents a selection of Brecht's principal writings for directors and theatre practitioners, and is suitable for acting schools, directors, actors, students and teachers of Theatre Studies. Through these texts Brecht provides a general practical approach to acting and to realising texts for the stage that crystallises and makes concrete many of the more theoretical aspects of his other writing.The volume is in two parts. The first features an entirely new commentated edition of Brecht's dialogues and essays about the practice of theatre, known as the "Messingkauf," or "Buying Brass," including the 'Practice Pieces' for actors (rehearsal scenes for classics by Shakespeare and Schiller). The second contains rehearsal and production records from Brecht's work on productions of" Life of Galileo," "Antigone," "Mother Courage" and others.Edited by an international team of Brecht scholars and including an essay by director and teacher Di Trevis examining the practical application of these texts for theatres and actors today, "Brecht on Performance" is a wonderfully rich resource. The text is illustrated with over 30 photographs from the "Modelbooks."

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).

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).