Against Nature

The original handbook of decadence – has enjoyed a cult readership since its publication, with fans including Oscar Wilde and Marianne FaithfullThe hero of this curious novel is des Esseintes, 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, starting with the decision to give his giant pet tortoise a jewel-encrusted shell…

Patrick McGuinness (Introducer, Translator) Patrick McGuinness is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of St Anne’s College. Born in Tunisia and raised in Belgium, he is a poet, novelist and translator. His novel The Last Hundred Days was longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2011 Costa First Novel Award, and his second novel, Throw me to the Wolves, won the 2020 Encore Award. His other books include three collections of poems, The Canals of Mars (2004), Jilted City (2010), Blood Feather (2023) and a memoir, Other People’s Countries (2015), which won the Duff Cooper Prize. He was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2011, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.