Against Nature
( À Rebours )
Joris-Karl Huysmans
The scion of an exhausted aristocracy retreats to a Paris suburb to live without the friction of other people— in rooms designed to his aesthetic ideals, well beyond the real.
A ship's-cabin study with an aquarium porthole. A hothouse of exotic flowers so bizarre they appear artificial. A liqueur organ that plays symphonies on the tongue. A perfume console that summons whole landscapes from scent.
Oscar Wilde's "yellow book" from The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the book the prosecution used against him. Huysmans gives us the wellness retreat, billionaire bunker, and curated digital feed all rolled into one — a hundred years early.
"This last book of Huysmans is one of the best I have ever seen."
— Oscar Wilde, 1884
"Once you've written a book of such powerful originality, unrivaled even today in all of literature, how do you go on writing?"
— Michel Houellebecq, in Submission
"In his stupefying book, Huysmans has just analysed and narrated in the most ingenious, funny and unexpected fashion the illness of one of these disgusted people… a book that one might call the history of a neurosis."
— Guy de Maupassant
In This Edition
Time Warp Editions- 01
A New Translation from the French
Restoring earlier censored material — the complete text as Huysmans wrote it.
- 02
Huysmans' 1903 Preface
The author's own retrospective, written twenty years after publication, in response to his critics.
- 03
Contemporary Reactions, 1884
A compilation of reviews and reactions from the Parisian press — shock, awe, prosecution.
- 04
Essay on The Decadence
A new contextual introduction for today and a special essay on the decadent movement.
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