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 Cuffe A 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 poisonous flowers, sets gemstones in a tortoise's gold-painted shell, and plans to corrupt a street urchin until he is degraded enough to commit murder. Des Esseintes's groundbreaking aesthetic pilgrimage in Against Nature has served as the guidebook to decadence