A magisterial biography of Brecht ... Parker's choice to present new material very much through the prism of the artist is compelling ... Fascinating reading.

Rebecca Morrison, The Independent

We should be grateful to [Parker] for reminding us how important, love him or loathe him, Brecht was – and still is.

John Sutherland, The Sunday Times

Stephen Parker's Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life is that rare thing, not only the biography of a genius, but itself a biography of genius. Parker, a Professor of German at Manchester, has written a foot perfect, detailed, fascinating and really inward book on a man who was plausibly described as “one of the most complicated human beings of the past fifty years”. It may well be the best literary biography I have read, the intricate demands of the subject met and unfussily answered by the insightful calm and nuanced decisiveness of the biographer . . . His is indeed one of the great literary lives, and Parker's book is every bit as good as it needs to be

Michael Hofmann, The Times Literary Supplement

[A] masterly biography of Brecht … [A]n astonishing tour de force based on impressive scholarship. For once the subtitle, 'A Literary Life', is apposite, for, as the complex strands of Brecht's life are revealed, we never forget that he is above all a writer.

Donald Sassoon, Literary Review

British scholar Stephen Parker's new biography replaces the monster of Brecht & Co. with a recognizable human … Whatever percentage of those plays he wrote, Parker reminds us that it was Brecht whose ideas shaped their creation, Brecht who schemed and fought for their productions, Brecht who galvanized modern theater with a radically new performance style. He was deeply flawed man and an enormously important cultural figure. He fully merits the nuanced portrait he receives in Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life.

Wendy Smith, Washington Post

Stephen Parker has written an extraordinary work about a man he also repeatedly finds extraordinary, giving his book unusual liveliness and spontaneity … [T]his is by far the fullest of any English-language source, and it is the fullest biography in any language, making good use of the magnificent chronology of Brecht's life of over 1,300 pages by Werner Hecht.

Nicholas Jacobs, Camden New Journal