A ruined young Parisian finds a magic talisman that grants his every wish, but each granted wish shrinks the skin and consumes a portion of his remaining life.
Books mentioned in The Wild Ass's Skin (11)
Clarissa by Samuel Richardson: “One would need to be very much in love to share the furious transports of Lovelace, as one reads Clarissa Harlowe.”
Manfred by Byron: “he had come on a Manfred when he looked to find Childe Harold”
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: “very much like Sancho Panza giving to Don Quixote the history of the goats”
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: “STERNE--Tristram Shandy, ch.”
Venice Preserv'd by Thomas Otway: “"Aquilina." "Out of _Venice Preserved_!"”
Donkeyskin by Charles Perrault: “As with the heroine of the fable of '_Peau-d'Ane_,' a dainty foot peeped out of the clumsy shoes.”
The Red Inn by Honoré de Balzac: “His darkly flushed, perspiring countenance loomed upon this pandemonium, like the image of a crime that knows no remorse (see _L'Auberge rouge_).”
The Provincial Letters by Blaise Pascal: “What! the author of the _Lettres provinciales_ invented it?”
A Thousand and One Nights: “Unable to analyze Foedora by any other process, I told her this fanciful story; but no hint of her resemblance to this poetry of the impossible crossed her--it simply diverted her; she was like a child over a story from the _Arabian Nights_.”
The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais: “For a year past I had beheld myself well dressed, in a carriage, with a pretty woman by my side, playing the great lord, dining at Very's, deciding not to go back home till the morrow; but was prepared for my father with a plot more intricate than the Marriage of Figaro, which he could not possibly have unraveled.”
Books that mention The Wild Ass's Skin (1)
Martin Eden by Jack London: “The critics were unanimous in the belief that it would take its place with those two classics by two great writers, "The Bottle Imp" and "The Magic Skin."”