J.-K. Huysmans

A critical biography of a major novelist and art critic from the late nineteenth-century French decadent movement. J.-K. Huysmans (1848–1907) is often hailed as a forerunner of modernist letters. While his novel À rebours / Against Nature remains infamous for its reclusive protagonist retreating into a realm of artifice and dreams, Huysmans’s literary contributions are far-reaching. Ruth Antosh explores Huysmans’s life and work, illustrating how both reflect an uneasy era of profound social and