Winner of the 2003 Prix Goncourt, a novel hailed by the times literary supplement as "a delicate, elegiac tale of political failure and defeated love."

A fictional story based on the final years of playwright Bertolt Brecht, Brecht's Mistress is a literary Cold War thriller that "recalls le Carré" (Daily Telegraph) in its evocation of the grim world of postwar East Germany and its depiction of personal destinies intertwined with superpower rivalry.

Inspired by an actual photograph taken of Brecht and a beautiful unknown young woman, Amette's novel opens on October 22, 1948, the day of Brecht's return to the Soviet-controlled zone of Berlin. Despite Brecht's abiding communist sympathies, the Stasi, East Germany's notorious secret police force, suspects his motives and recruits the young and vulnerable Viennese actress Maria Eich to spy on him. Brecht—married to the actress Helen Weigel—is a womanizer, and Maria soon becomes one of a long string of mistresses. Maria, for her part, has fallen in love with her Stasi recruiting officer, Hans Trow. An intricate plot plays itself out on the terrain of infidelities, ambition, and Cold War politics.

龚古尔奖颁给了雅克-皮埃尔·阿迈特(Jacques-Pierre Amette)的小说《布莱希特的情妇》（La Ma?tresse de Brecht，阿尔班-米歇尔出版社）。小说以1948年的德国为背景，为从国外归来的著名剧作家布莱希特虚构了一个情妇。小说风格朴素，把爱情游戏和间谍角色游戏糅合在一起，是一部“试图靠近政治的学者的悲剧”。作者笔下的布莱希特和玛丽亚·艾施的故事都是虚构的，但他精细的文笔使整整一个东柏林艺术界在小说中变得活灵活现，令读者更愿相信一切都是史实，而且他遣词造句运用的都是布莱希特的方式。