Joris-Karl Huysmans

The hero of this curious novel is des Esseintes, a neurasthenic aristocrat who has turned his back on the vulgarity of modern life and retreated to an isolated country villa. Here, accompanied only by a couple of silent servants, he pursues his obsessions with exotic flowers, rare gems, and complex perfumes and embarks on a series of increasingly strange aesthetic experiments, starting with the decision to give his giant pet tortoise a jewel-encrusted shell...

Against Nature

At the novel's center is Durtal, a writer obsessed with the life of one of the blackest figures in history, Gilles de Rais — child murderer, sadist, necrophile, and practitioner of all the black arts. The book's authentic, extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the Black Mass have never been surpassed.

Down There (La-Bas)

Marcel Schwob

Jean Lorrain

Janice Law

Michael P. Daley

Lou Perliss

Dan A. Stitzer

Jeremy Kitchen

Julia Bembenek

Mark Iosifescu

Villiers De L'Isle-Adam

Sam Kunkel

Tales of the Strange & Estranged

Echoes of a Natural World

A Contrapelo / Against Nature

This classic novel pushed 19th-century literary decadence to its limits. Introduction by Havelock Ellis.

(A Rebours).

Against the Grain

I avgrunden

Á rebours

Against nature =

"Joris-Karl Huysmans's cult classic of deviance and decadence that inspired Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, now in a new translation"--

A Novel

`It will be the biggest fiasco of the year - but I don't care a damn! It will be something nobody has ever done before, and I shall have said what I had to say.' As Joris -Karl Huysmans announced in 1884, Against Nature was fated to be a novel like no other. Resisting the models of classic nineteenth-century fiction, it focuses on the attempts of its anti-hero, the hypersensitive neurotic and aesthete, Des Esseintes, to escape Paris and the vulgarity of modern life. Holed up in his private museum of high taste, he offers Huysmans's readers a treasure trove of cultural delights which anticipates many of the strains of modernism in its appreciation of Baudelaire, Moreau, Redon, Mallarmé and Poe. This new translation is supplemented by indispensable notes which enhance the understanding of a highly allusive work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A Rebours

Knapsacks

En Route (European Classics)

Ao Arrepio

O Castelo do Homem Ancorado

Tahsin Yücel

Tersine

En Route

En ménage

From a series of inductive analyses of the best-known French novels of the past century, this study develops a theory of the ways in which the notion of causation functions to bind together the threads of narrative. Unavoidably present in the language of novels, where every transitive verb implies it, causation at the level of the story is essentially the readers' creation, as they determine for themselves what causes specific story events and what motivates characters.

From Brothel to Cloister : Selected Letters of J.K. Huysmans

The Road from Decadence

Including Marthe, A Dish of Spices (Le Drageoir Aux Épices), Critical Papers (from Certains and L'art Moderne), and a Twenty-year-after Preface (to A Rebours)

Down Stream (A Vau-l'eau) and Other Works

Joris-Karl Huysmans

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