At the novel's center is Durtal, a writer obsessed with the life of one of the blackest figures in history, Gilles de Rais -- child murderer, sadist, necrophile, and practitioner of all the black arts. The book's authentic, extraordinarily detailed descri
Downstream, the shortest and most autobiographical of Huysmans’ novels, is the perfect example of what the French naturalists wanted a novel to be. This dark and mordantly comic masterpiece of everyday pessimism about a Parisian clerk seeking spiritu
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, y
J.-K. Huysmans’ Stranded (En Rade 1887), published just three years after the iconoclastic Against Nature, sees him again breaking new ground and pushing back the boundaries of the novel form. Stamped throughout with his characteristic black humour, Str
This anthology is the largest ever selection from the Decadent and Symbolist writers of the French fin-de-siècle — a period whose social and spiritual ills had so much in common with those of today.The selection is based on a series of essays on contem
