Against Nature

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. In an environment of ascetic medievalism and hermit-like seclusion, des Esseintes reviews the compendium of human experience. Color, food and drink, literature, art, music, philosophy, and religion—all are scrutinized, sifted, and analyzed according to his delicate, highly selective tastes.
Filled with weird images, manifestations of a bizarre imagination, and biting wit, this novel scandalized Victorian critics with its break from naturalism and embrace of fin-de-siècle decadence. It nevertheless exerted considerable influence over French and English writers and remains a classic account of the quest for enlarged experience and new sensations. This edition includes a Preface written by the author 20 years after the book's original 1884 publication.

Novelist and art critic Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans (1848–1907), writing as Joris-Karl Huysmans, chronicled the aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual life of late 19th-century France. Against Nature reflects the disgust with modern life and profound pessimism that led him first to the philosophy of Schopenhauer and ultimately to an embrace of Roman Catholicism.