From the revolutionary author of Marat/Sade, a meticulously observed and macabre novel of hell on earth. The Shadow of the Coachman’s Body was unanimously praised as an original work of art by critics when it first appeared in 1960. Here, in poet Rosmarie Waldrop’s pitch-perfect translation, Weiss presents a vividly alive black comedy of inert objects—stones, buttons, needles, tin cups, celestial orbs, an overwound music box—with 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 possibilities—a telescope and kaleidoscope rolled into one.

They were men who did nothing but walk walk walk. They were big, they were bearded, they wore leather caps and long raincoats, they called themselves Abel, Babel, and Cabel, and while they walked they talked to each other.

Conversation of the Three Wayfarers is a three-sided first-person monologue told by the wayfarers: Abel, Babel, and Cabel. The men exchange fantastic tales—of a bridge, a bride, and the ferryman’s sons; of an island, a river, a wharf—but one never knows who is speaking or where one tale leaves off and the next begins. The effect is of a series of breathless capers: a steeplechase performed on a floating pontoon.