Against Nature (A Rebours)

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Joris-Karl Huysmans

Penguin, New York, 2003; originally published (in French) 1884, English

Fiction

ISBN: 9780140447637

Follows a single character, an ailing young aristocrat of uncommon intelligence who isolates himself in a villa to indulge in aesthetic and sensual pleasures. The novel is a descriptive guidebook to beauty and decadence and was a critical text for the Symbolists. (It has also been translated into English under the title Against the Grain.)

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Dominique Browning

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You will never forget the description of the gem-encrusted tortoise.

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