Against Nature

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 CuffeA celebration of deviance, vanity, sensual ab ...

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 CuffeA celebration of deviance, vanity, sensual abandon, and the aesthetics of artifice, Against Nature brings us the nineteenth-century rebel Jean Des Esseintes—disaffected, degenerate, and art obsessed. The last of a proud and noble family, Des Esseintes retreats from the world in disgust at bourgeois society and leads a life based on cultivation of the senses through art. He distills perfumes from the rarest oils and essences, creates a garden of