Peter Schlemiel

Asked which book by another author he would most like to claim as his own work, Italo Calvino once said without hesitation, Adelbert von Chamisso's Peter Schlemiel. First published in 1814, this brilliant novel is not only a precursor of Poe, Kafka, and the magic realists - it is a timeless fable with a remarkably contemporary flavor. When a mysterious man in a gray coat asks Peter Schlemiel if he would sell him his shadow, that "lovely, lovely shadow" of his, he naturally thinks the man must be mad. But then the stranger makes him an offer he can't refuse. In return for his shadow, Schlemiel…