The cult novel of fin de siecle decadence that inspired Oscar Wilde 'It will be biggest fiasco of the year - but I don't give a damn! It will be something nobody has ever done before.' The title page of the first complete English translation of Against Nature (published in the French as A Rebours) included the caption 'the book that Dorian Gray loved and inspired Oscar Wilde.' It was, declared Wilde, one of the best novels he had ever read. It is the story of Jean des Esseintes, the last of a proud and noble family, who retreats from the world in disgust at bourgeois society and leads a life based on cultivation of the senses through art. Des Esseintes distills perfumes from the rarest oils and essences, he 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' aesthetic pilgrimage is described in minutely documented realistic detail and was widely regarded as the guidebook of decadence. This influential novel is now available in a new translation by Theo Cuffe and includes a preface by Luc Sante.

‘He drank this liquid perfume from cups of that oriental porcelain known as egg-shell china, it is so delicate and diaphanous’

A wildly original fin de siècle novel, Against Nature contains only one character. De Esseinte is a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where he indulges his taste for luxury and excess.  Veering between nervous excitability and debilitating ennui he gluts his aesthetic appetites with classical literature and art, exotic jewels (with which he fatally encrusts the shell of his tortoise), rich perfumes and a kaleidoscope of sensual experiences. Against Nature, in the words of the author exploded ‘like a grenade’ and has a cult following to this day.

This revised edition of Robert Baldick’s lucid translation, features a new introduction, a chronology and reproduces Huysman’s original 1903 preface as well as a selection of reviews from writers including Mallarme, Zola and Wilde.

Huysmans (1848-1907) fue primero seguidor de Zola, para luego entrar en la corriente espiritual, decandente y refinada, en la que brillo tambien Villiers de L'isle-Adam, su gran amigo. A contrapelo es la gran novela de la ruptura con un Naturalismo ya exhausto. Es la novela de la nueva sensibilidad estetica, inconformista, encarnada en su protagonista, el exquisito y rebelde duque Jean Floressas des Esseintes.

Published in 1891, "La-bas" is Huysmans' best-selling novel; its success was due, in part, to its sensational contents (descriptions of Satanism in late 1880 France.) It is in this novel that Huysmans' character, Durtal, is introduced for the first time. This character is thought to be a semi-autobiographical depiction of the author and is used in his next three books which chart Durtal's (and Huysmans') search for religious truths and his ultimate conversion to Roman Catholicism. The journey begins with the viewing of an extremely realistic painting: "In Germany, before a Crucifixion by Matthus Grnewald, he had found what he was seeking."