Peter Weiss and the Riddle of Representation

Peter Weiss was 45 years old when his first work of literary fiction, The Shadow of the Coachman’s Body, came out in 1960. He had spent some 30 years studying painting and illustration, and another seven making surrealist short films. Weiss had some trouble finding a publisher for what he called his “micro-novel” (this new translation by Rosemarie Waldrop comes in at under 100 pages), but upon its release it would launch him to the forefront of the experimental postwar literary movement in Europe, where he would join the likes of Heinrich Böll, Samuel Beckett, and Jean Genet.