Like Sam Shepard-the American playwright whose career his most nearly resembles-Franz Xaver Kroetz is a controversial figure whose works have helped reshape world drama over the last two decades. His unsparing portraits of life in Germany's lower middle class redefine the notion of realism on the stage.

The only Kroetz collection available in English, this volume includes: Through the Leaves, about a female butcher and her laborer lover; The Nest, about a worker who inadvertently poisons a lake and, consequently, injures his infant son; and Mensch Meier, about a jittery, imaginative Munich assembly-line worker, his vague, housebound wife and their silently observant teenage son.