All Formats & Editions

The infamous inspiration for the novel which slowly corrupts Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray

Resisting the traditional model of nineteenth-century fiction, Joris-Karl Huysman produced in 1884 a novel unlike any other of his time. Against Nature is the story of Des Esseintes, an aesthete who attempts to escape Paris and, along with it, the vulgarity of modern life. As... Read Full Overview

? rebours

Duc Jean des Esseintes, the wealthy last survivor of a once-powerful family, has retreated from his bourgeois life in Paris. Overwhelmed by the absurdities and grotesqueries of human affairs, he dwells in an isolated villa, spending his days in intellectual and aesthetic contemplation... Read Full Overview

Joris-Karl Huysmans: ? rebours

The Floressas Des Esseintes, to judge by the various portraits preserved in the Ch teau de Lourps, had originally been a family of stalwart troopers and stern cavalry men. Closely arrayed, side by side, in the old frames which their broad shoulders filled, they startled one with... Read Full Overview

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... Read Full Overview

Originally published in French under the title " Rebours" in 1884 and translated into English in 1926, "Against Nature", also known as "Against the Grain", is a book by Joris-Karl Huysmans and is well described by its subtitle "A Novel Without a Plot". The premise of the... Read Full Overview

Joris-Karl Huysmans was a famous French writer known for his large vocabulary and wit. Huysmans most famous novel was Against Nature.

Against Nature J. K. Huysmans "Against Nature is one of the great fictions of the "fin de siecle and a virtual text book for what the critics of the time called "decadent" literature. The victim of over-wrought nerves, of neuralgia and dyspepia, Des Esssintes retires for a season... Read Full Overview

? rebours (translated into English as Against Nature or Against the Grain) (1884) is a novel by the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans. Its narrative concentrates almost entirely on its principal character, and is mostly a catalogue of the tastes and inner life of Jean Des Esseintes,... Read Full Overview

Joris-Karl Huysmans was a famous French writer known for his large vocabulary, and wit. Huysmans most famous novel was Against Nature. Huysmans' next famous novel is The Damned, which deals with the subject of Satanism.

Translated by Havelock Ellis, 1922.