The Magic Skin
1831
A young man stands at the edge of the Pont des Arts, ready to end his life. Raphael de Valentin has squandered his inheritance, his ambitions, his very will to live. Then a mysterious dealer offers him a scrap of wild ass's skin: it will grant him anything his heart desires, but with each wish the skin shrinks, stealing years from his life. One wish, one shrinking, one step closer to death. What follows is Balzac's darkest meditation on desire itself. He wishes for wealth, for love, for power each wish stripping away his remaining years until he confronts the terrible arithmetic of his own longing. Part Gothic fever dream, part ruthless portrait of Parisian society in the 1830s, The Magic Skin asks what we all secretly fear: that getting everything we want might be the cruelest trick of all. For readers who love Faustian bargains, moral philosophy, and novels that haunt you long after the last page.
