From the revolutionary author of Marat/Sade, a meticulously observed and macabre novel of hell on earth. The Shadow of the Coachmans Body was unanimously praised as an original work of art by critics when it first appeared in 1960. Here, in poet Rosmarie Waldrops pitch-perfect translation, Weiss presents a vividly alive black comedy of inert objectsstones, buttons, needles, tin cups, celestial orbs, an overwound music boxwith a supporting cast of the oblique residents of a dismal boarding house.
Described by Weiss as a micro-novel, his first prose work can be obscene, trivial and brutal, and yet it is also peculiarly intimate with endless possibilitiesa telescope and kaleidoscope rolled into one.