Against Nature

Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans is a novel and narrative almost entirely on its principal character and is mostly a catalogue of the tastes and inner life of Jean Des Esseintes. Des Esseintes is a neurasthenic aristocrat who has turned his back on the vulgarity of modern life and retreated to an isolated country villa. Here accompanied only by a couple of silent servants he pursues his obsessions with exotic flowers rare gems and complex perfumes and embarks on a series of increasingly strange aesthetic experiments. Charles-Marie-Georges was a French novelist who published his works as Joris-Karl. He is most famous for the novel À rebours (Against the Grain or Against Nature). His style is remarkable for its idiosyncratic use of the French language wide-ranging vocabulary wealth of detailed and sensuous description and biting satirical wit.