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Against Nature
Author: J. K. Huysmans
Translator: Brendan King
Cover illustration: Egon Shiele, Egon Shiele
Against Nature is Huysmans's great fin-de-siècle novel anticipating many of the strains of modernism in its appreciation of Baudelaire, Moreau, Redon, Mallarmé and Poe. '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 J -K Huysmans announced in 1884, Against Nature was fated to be a novel like no other.
The hero, des Esseintes, is 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...
Reviews
- James Smart in The Guardian
- Books for Christmas by Peter Burton in Three Sixty Magazine
- Nicholas White in The Times Literary Supplement
RRP: £8.99
No. of pages: 315
Publication date: 28 May, 2008
Re-print date: unspecified
Catalogue/ISBN no: 978 1 903517 65 9
World English Language in this Translation
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