`It will be the biggest fiasco of the year - but I don''t care a damn! It will be something nobody has ever done before, and I shall have said what I had to say.'' As Joris -Karl Huysmans announced in 1884, Against Nature was fated to be a novel like no other. Resisting the models of classic nineteenth-century fiction, it focuses on the attempts of its anti-hero, the hypersensitive neurotic and aesthete, Des Esseintes, to escape Paris and the vulgarity of modern life. Holed up in his private museum of high taste, he offers Huysmans''s readers a treasure trove of cultural delights which anticipates many of the strains of modernism in itsappreciation of Baudelaire, Moreau, Redon, Mallarm-nd Poe. This new translation is supplemented by indispensable notes which enhance the understanding of a highly allusive work. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s c
