This first English language biography of Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) in two decades paints a strikingly new picture of one of the twentieth century's most controversial cultural icons. First published in 2014 and now available in paperback, it was critically lauded and declared the definitive life of this great artist and writer.

Drawing on letters, diaries and unpublished material, including Brecht's medical records, Parker offers a rich and enthralling account of Brecht's life and work, viewed through the prism of the artist. Tracing his extraordinary life, from his formative years in Augsburg, through the First World War, his politicisation during the Weimar Republic and his years of exile, up to the Berliner Ensemble's dazzling productions in Paris and London, Parker shows how Brecht achieved his transformative effect upon world theatre and poetry.

Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life is a powerful portrait of a great, compulsively contradictory personality, whose artistry left its lasting imprint on modern culture.

Using a letter from the archive in which Brecht writes to his son Stefan on the tensions pulling the artistic and political subject between insensitivity and sensitivity, Parker finds a suggestive prompt for investigating the contrary strains on Brecht's body and mind between choler and melancholy, and hardness and receptivity, and their impact on his work pulled between parabolic clarity and poetic turbulence (71). This approach yields fresh insights into the young writer's struggle to master conflicting desires and tame a body wracked by multiple maladies- chapters on Brecht's formation through the 1920s illuminate his creative response to contrary impulses, especially the play between passion and irony in the poetry.