Against Nature

Joris-Karl Huysmans, Patrick McGuinness, Patrick McGuinness , Patrick McGuinness

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French

Penguin Classics
07 July 2003

The original handbook of decadence - has enjoyed a cult readership since its publication, with fans including Oscar Wilde and Marianne Faithfull

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...

By: Joris-Karl Huysmans
Notes by: Patrick McGuinness
Introduction by: Patrick McGuinness
Translated by: Patrick McGuinness, Robert Baldick
Imprint: Penguin Classics
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 16mm
Weight: 213g
ISBN: 9780140447637
ISBN 10: 0140447636
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 07 July 2003
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Born in Paris in 1848 and acknowledged as a principal architect of the fin-de-siecle imagination, Joris-Karl Huysmans was a career civil servant who wrote ten novels, most notably A Rebours (1884) and La-Bas (1891). Huysmans died in 1907. Robert Baldick (d.1972) translated widely from the French and wrote a biography of Huysmans. Patrick McGuinness is a Fellow and Tutor in French at St Anne's College, Oxford, and editor of Symbolism, Decadence and the Fin de Siecle (Exeter UP, 2000).