A beautiful fairytale, full of poetry, “The woman without a shadow” is Hofmannsthal’s narrative epilogue before he started dedicating to theatre plays and it brings us to fantastic dimensions, to the primal expression of our emotions. The plot is classic and contains all the necessary elements for a fairytale: the supernatural element, fear, dealing with and overcoming adversity and the final redemption. The main character is a princess of fairies - a woman without a shadow, even in the literal sense that her body does not cast any shadow - who loves and marries a human emperor. In order to live with him, she has to redeem her magical nature and become mortal. Like all fairytales, it is somehow moralistic, it has the power to bring us back to our earliest dreams, which may be buried under the tyrannical daily routine but indeed they’re always ready to awaken thanks to the imagination. A gentle and moving tale, for which it is really worth forgetting our sorrows and turning on a reading light. A pure Rebirth.

Hugo Von Hofmannsthal, The woman without a shadow (Die Frau ohne Schatten)
Italian edition: edizioni SE