The Caucasian Chalk Circle: Penguin Modern Classics

Bertold Brecht (1898-1956) is one of Germany's best-known playwrights. His social critiques, including The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Mother Courage and Her Children and The Threepenny Opera, resonate with modern audiences and continue to be frequently performed.


Eric Bentley, one of the foremost authorities on the modern theatre, is a recognized playwright, critic and scholar, and a longtime intimate of Brecht. His most recent book is Bentley on Brecht.

'an adept new translation by Alistair Beaton'
'The Caucasian Chalk Circle, written in 1944 while he was in exile from Germany, gives some epic illumination to socialist ideas about ownership and injustice. But more than that it's a story about love winning out over endemic corruption'
The play is translated, with political wit and crisp clarity, by Alistair Beaton . . . The result is a Chalk Circle which makes an unarguable case for the continued relevance both of Brecht's theatrical aesthetics and his allegorical subject matter.
Alistair Beaton's sharp rhythmic translation finds a contemporary relevance too, but not intrusively so.