**Joris-Karl Huysmans's cult classic of deviance and decadence that
inspired Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray, now in a new
translation by Theo Cuffe
**
A celebration of deviance, vanity, sensual abandon, and the aesthetics
of artifice, Against Nature brings us the nineteenth-century rebel
Jean Des Esseintes--disaffected, degenerate, and art obsessed. The last
of a proud and noble family, Des Esseintes retreats from the world in
disgust at bourgeois society and leads a life based on cultivation of
the senses through art. He distills perfumes from the rarest oils and
essences, creates a garden of poisonous flowers, sets gemstones in a
tortoise's gold-painted shell, and plans to corrupt a street urchin
until he is degraded enough to commit murder. Des Esseintes's
groundbreaking aesthetic pilgrimage in Against Nature has served as
the guidebook to decadence for more than a century, inspiring writers
from Oscar Wilde to Michel Houellebecq.
A pioneer whose early work took inspiration from Baudelaire and Zola,
Joris-Karl Huysmans was a founder of the nineteenth-century decadent
movement. Against Nature has influenced countless writers and artists
and enjoys a cult following to this day. This new translation by Theo
Cuffe, with a foreword by Lucy Sante, captures the magnificence of
Huysmans's famous style--filled with wit and irony, expressiveness and
precision, erudition and sensuality.
