The Shadow of the Coachman's Body

Peter Weisss first prose work, The Shadow of the Coachmans Body, was unanimously praised as an original and perfect work of art by critics when it appeared in 1960. Here, in poet Rosmarie Waldrops stunning translation, Weiss arranges a dark, vividly alive comedy of inert objects in a dismal boarding housestones, buttons, hooks, needles, chairs, newspapers in an outhouse, clinking tin cups, celestial orbs, sewing machines, an overwound windup music boxwhich have oblique characters shadows as their supporting cast. Described by Weiss as a micro-novel, The Shadow of the Coachmans Body can be obscene, trivial and brutal, and yet it is also peculiarly intimate and offers endless possibilitieslike a telescope and kaleidoscope rolled into one.