Book · 1884 · Fiction

Against Nature

Name: Against Nature
Author: Joris-Karl Huysmans

Penguin Books (Penguin Random House) · 242 pages

★ 6.7 editorial score

Des Esseintes, the last of a spent aristocratic line, retreats to a house outside Paris filled with perfumes, poisonous flowers, and a jeweled tortoise. Wilde and the English aesthetes read it as scripture.

Genre

Decadent literature Symbolism

Medium

Novel

Subject

Art The individual Individual vs. society

Setting

Paris

Time

1884Depicts Belle Epoque (France/Europe)Depicts 1880s

Related books

Other volumes that share a subject, a setting, or an author with this one.

Nonfiction · Symbolism

The Collected Poems

W.B. Yeats

1939 · 544 pages

Another book ofGenre·Symbolism

Fiction · Symbolism

A Season in Hell

Arthur Rimbaud

1873 · 103 pages

Another book ofGenre·Symbolism

Nonfiction · Philosophy

Essays

Michel de Montaigne

1580 · 1283 pages

Another book aboutSubject·The individual

Nonfiction · Philosophy

On Liberty

John Stuart Mill

1859 · 592 pages

Another book aboutSubject·The individual

Other media

Works in other forms that share a subject with this one.

Other media onSubject·The individual

Quote · 2015

“There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate—the genetic and neural fate—of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.”

Oliver Sacks

Quote · 1859

“Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

John Stuart Mill

Quote · 1987

“What draws my admiration? What is that which gives me joy? Baseball! A man...a man stands alone at a plate. This is the time for what? For individual achievement. There he stands alone. But in the field, what? Part of a team. Looks, throws, catches, hustles. Part of one big team. Bats himself the live-long day, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and so on. If his team don't field...what is he? You follow me? No one.”

Al Capone