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Books Like The Threepenny Opera
Best books to read after The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht
Readers who love The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht are drawn to its combination of satirical sharpness, Kurt Weill's music, the portrait of the criminal as a more honest version of the businessman, and the anarchic energy of the Weimar Republic — they want plays and novels that deal with the analogy between criminality and capitalism, the tradition of the musical with political teeth, and the Brecht-Weill collaboration.
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Mother Courage and Her Children
by Bertolt Brecht
The later companion — Mother Courage, the cart, and the Thirty Years War. Companion investigations of capitalism as the system that organizes modern life: in The Threepenny Opera, through the comic-satiric analogy between criminality and business; in Mother Courage, through the catastrophic analogy between commerce and war
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The Beggar's Opera
by John Gay
The source and companion — Captain Macheath, Polly Peachum, Lucy Lockit, and eighteenth-century London. Gay's 1728 opera is the source text for The Threepenny Opera; Brecht and Weill updated Gay's satire of Walpole's government into a 1928 satire of the Weimar Republic and capitalism generally
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Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens
Dickens's companion in the literary tradition of the investigation of criminality and poverty in London — Oliver Twist, Fagin, and Bill Sikes. Both are investigations of the relationship between poverty, criminality, and the respectable bourgeois society that generates both
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The Good Woman of Setzuan
by Bertolt Brecht
The companion Brecht play about what it means to be good in a bad system. Companion Brecht plays about the impossibility of goodness in a capitalist system: The Threepenny Opera shows the analogy between crime and business; The Good Woman of Setzuan shows the person who tries to be good and must become bad to survive
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American Psycho
by Bret Easton Ellis
Ellis's companion in the literary tradition of the satire that makes the analogy between business and criminality explicit — Patrick Bateman, investment banker and serial killer. Both The Threepenny Opera and American Psycho are organized around the same satirical premise: the successful businessman and the successful criminal are the same person operating in different registers
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Guys and Dolls
by Frank Loesser
The companion in the theatrical tradition of the musical organized around the world of gamblers and criminals — Sky Masterson, Nathan Detroit, Miss Adelaide. Both use the world of crime and its colorful inhabitants to make a point about the relationship between crime and the society that surrounds it: Brecht's is Marxist; Loesser's is gentler, but both recognize the appeal of people who operate outside the law
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Cabaret
by John Kander
The companion in the theatrical tradition of the politically charged musical set in Weimar Germany — the Kit Kat Klub, Sally Bowles, and the coming of the Nazis. Cabaret and The Threepenny Opera are companion theatrical investigations of Weimar Germany's political situation: The Threepenny Opera is the comic-satiric version (1928, before the catastrophe); Cabaret is the elegiac version (1966, looking back)
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Life of Galileo
by Bertolt Brecht
The companion Brecht play about the relationship between self-preservation and complicity — Galileo's recantation under pressure from the Inquisition. Both Life of Galileo and The Threepenny Opera are Brecht investigations of the same question: what is the relationship between survival and complicity in a bad system?
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