Choose the reading experience.
The English editions of Huysmans’s Against Nature (1884) offer different ways into Des Esseintes’s retreat. A sample gives you the translator’s sentences; a contents list shows the surrounding essays and notes. Check both before choosing, especially if you are meeting the novel’s painters, poets and religious arguments for the first time.
Start with a complete text
John Howard’s 1922 Against the Grain omits the whole of the original Chapter VI and part of IX. Later complete translations, including ours, contain these passages. Check the translator as well as the title: Against Nature and Against the Grain are both English titles for À rebours.
See exactly what Howard leaves out →
Spend time with the prose
Read more than a sentence. Notice how the translator handles a long description, an unfamiliar word or a sudden change in Des Esseintes’s thoughts. In our translation, we have worked to retain Huysmans’s extended sentences and specialised vocabulary, with selected French terms explained in the endnotes.
Try our selected passages from Chapters VIII and IX →
Look at the notes, too
An introduction can help you find your way into the novel. Notes let you follow a reference when it catches your interest. Our Chapter IV sample places the liqueur-organ passage beside its printed endnote, so you can see how we explain Des Esseintes’s attempt to compose music through taste.