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Against Nature
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Against Nature
Des Esseintes is a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where her indulges his taste for luxury and excess. Veering between nervous excitability and debilitating ennui, he gluts his aesthetic appetites with classical literature and art, exotic jewels (with which he fatally encrusts the shell of his tortoise).
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
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Description
The 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...
Against Nature explores themes of decadence and isolation, chronicling a man's quest for beauty and the extremes he reaches in his artistic endeavours.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780140447637
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 01 May 2003
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Penguin Classics
Contributors:
- Introduction by Patrick McGuinness
- Notes by Patrick McGuinness
- Translated by Patrick McGuinness
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 16.0mm
Width: 130.0mm
Height: 198.0mm
Weight: 215g
Pages: 288
About the Author
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.
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