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Against Nature (A Rebours) by Huysmans, Joris-Karl is a work of fiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Against Nature (A Rebours) about?

Against Nature is the perfect illustration of Oscar Wilde's famous paradox that life imitates art, and not the other way around. First published in Paris in 1884 when the Naturalistic school - of which Huysmans himself was a major figure - was at its height, it delivered a body-blow to Zola's brand of literary realism, and almost single-handedly redefined the literary and artistic canon of the nineteenth century in the process. To a rising generation of readers, writers and artists across Europe, Huysmans' novel was the instruction manual of a movement that was to become emblematic of fin-de-siecle France: Decadence. The novel tells the story of its decadent aristocratic anti-hero, Jean Floressas des Esseintes, who, bored by the aesthetic and carnal pleasures the Parisian beau monde has to offer, decides to sell up and move to an isolated house in the suburbs. There he constructs a world of artifice that exactly minors his super-subtle, perverse and painfully neurotic sensibility. The result is one of the most bizarre, intriguing and influential books of the period. Whether read as an existential fable, psychological analysis, style manual, cultural critique or social satire, the n

Who reads Against Nature (A Rebours)?

Author

Huysmans, Joris-Karl

Publisher

Dedalus

Published

1884

Language

EN

Category

work of fiction

Subjects

Fiction, World Fiction

Rating

3.89 / 5 (94 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14