Description
Bertolt Brecht’s play Tredje rikets fruktan och elände (Fear and Misery in the Third Reich) is based on eye-witness accounts and material taken from newspapers coming out of Nazi Germany. Brecht wrote the play with his collaborator Margarete Steffin (1908–1941) in exile. The twenty-four scenes are a montage of different parts of society, classes and occupations, poignant situations and quiet ordinary situations. The short scenes examine Nazism’s infiltration of everyday life in attitudes and expressions. The Spleen edition of Ulf Peter Hallberg’s new translation includes commentaries that situate Nazism in a contemporary perspective, an account of the historical productions of the play in Paris and New York, and an essay about Brecht, the actor, and the dramatic part.
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Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) was a German author, dramatist and director. His plays and writings about the theory and practice of the theatre are considered classics of the genre.
Ulf Peter Hallberg was born in Malmö but has lived in Berlin since 1983. He has translated, amongst others, Shakespeare, Walter Benjamin, Molière, Bertolt Brecht and Peter Handke. In 1992 and 2016, he was awarded the Swedish Academy’s and the Royal Swedish Academy of Science’s translation prize.
