The Caucasian Chalk Circle

Aug 13, 2025 10:58 PM

Author:Bertolt Brecht,Eric Bentley

The play is a parable inspired by the Chinese play Chalk Circle. Written at the close of World War II, the story is set in the Caucasus mountains of Georgia, and retells the tale of King Solomon and a child claimed by two mothers. A chalk circle is metaphorically drawn around a society misdirected in its priorities. Brecht's statements about class are cloaked in the innocence of a fable that whispers insistently to the audience.

Reviews

He exhausts superlatives

—— Stephen Fry

The handsome bindings are only the cherry on top of what is already a cake without compare

—— Evening Standard

Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.

—— Evelyn Waugh

Like those of Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Armistead Maupin's novels have all appeared originally as serials... it is the strength of this approach, with its fantastic adventures and astonishingly contrived coincidences, that makes these novels charming and compelling

—— Literary Review

Wise, witty, loving and caring about the foibles and frailties we all seem to have

—— David Hockney

A consummate entertainer... It is Maupin's Dickensian gift to be able to render love convincingly

—— The Times Literary Supplement

Robert Chandler's tenderly attentive rendering of The Railway perfectly captures the dreamy, circling music of Hamid Ismailov's prose

—— Chandrahas Choudhury , Daily Telegraph

Jean Plaidy conveys the texture of various patches of the past with such rich complexity

—— Guardian

Anna Maxted tells a tale of sibling rivalry with wit and emotion

—— InStyle

Warm, poignant and very funny

—— Marian Keyes

Hugely funny. Maxted writes beautifully

—— Daily Express

This modern day mythical fantasy is Anne Rice on an epic scale, a hugely imagined world. A chiller thriller from cold of Russia, this one's been selling like hot cakes around the world

—— Sunday Sport

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