Joris-Karl Huysmans: Against Nature (1884–) [FR, CZ, DE, EN, ES, PL, NO, IT]

“The narrative of this novel concentrates almost entirely on its principal character and is mostly a catalogue of the tastes and inner life of Jean Des Esseintes, an eccentric, reclusive aesthete and antihero who loathes 19th-century bourgeois society and tries to retreat into an ideal artistic world of his own creation. The novel contains many themes that became associated with the Symbolist aesthetic. In doing so, it broke from Naturalism and became the ultimate example of ‘decadent’ literature.” (Wikipedia)

French edition
With illustrations by Auguste Leroux
Publisher A. Ferroud – F. Ferroud, Paris, 1920
219 pages

English edition: Against the Grain
Translated by John Howard
Introduction by Havelock Ellis
Publisher Lieber & Lewis, New York, 1922
331 pages

English edition: Against Nature
Translated by Robert Baldick, 1956
With an Introduction and Notes by Patrick McGuinness
Publisher Penguin Books, 2003
ISBN 9780141906607

À rebours (French, 1884/1920), HTML, IA
Na ruby (Czech, trans. Arnošt Procházka, in Moderní revue, 1896, pages 9-16, 44-53, 69-76, 116-124, 148-152 and 174-183, added on 2015-2-5)
Gegen den Strich (German, trans. Hans Jacob, 1921/1978, added on 2015-2-5)
Against the Grain (English, trans. John Howard, 1922), IA
Al revés (Spanish, trans. Rodrigo Escudero, 1977, 12 MB, added on 2015-2-5)
Na wspak (Polish, trans. Julian Rogoziński, 1977, 40 MB, added on 2015-2-5)
Mot strømmen (Norwegian, trans. Jan Olav Gatland, 1998, requires Norwegian IP)
Against Nature (English, trans. Robert Baldick, 2003, EPUB)
Controcorrente (Italian, 2014, EPUB, added on 2015-2-5)

Alfred Kubin: The Other Side (1908-) [Spanish, English, Italian]

“Alfred Kubin (1877-1959) was one of the major graphic artists of the 20th century who was widely known for his illustrations of writers of the fantastic such as Balzac, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Gustav Meyrink and Edgar Allan Poe. In his combination of the darkly decadent, the fantastic and the grotesque, in his evocations of dream and nightmare, his creation of an atmosphere of mystery and fear he resembles Mervyn Peake.

The Other Side tells of a dream kingdom which becomes a nightmare, of a journey to Pearl, a mysterious city created deep in Asia, which is also a journey to the depths of the subconscious. Or as Kubin himself called it, ‘a sort of Baedeker for those lands which are half known to us’.” (from book jacket)

Originally published in German as Die andere Seite, Christa Spangenberg, Munich, 1908

English edition
Translated by Mike Mitchell
Publisher Dedalus, UK, 2000
Dedalus European Classics series
ISBN 1873982690
249 pages

publisher (EN)
Kubin at Wikipedia

La otra parte (Spanish, trans. Juan Jose del Solar, 1988)
The Other Side (English, trans. Mike Mitchell, 2000)
L’altra parte (Italian, trans. Lia Secci, 2nd edition, 2000/2012)

Chris Marker: The Forthright Spirit (1949/1951)

Chris Marker‘s debut novel.

“His friend Alain Resnais recalls that Marker favored a 1951 English translation of his prizewinning (Prix Orion, 1950) novel [..] because it had so little resemblance to the original.” (source)

Originally published in French as Le cœur net, Le Seuil, Paris, 1949.

Translated by Robert Kee and Terence Kilmartin
Publisher Allan Wingate, London, 1951
191 pages

Review: Roger Tailleur (Rouge, 1963/2007)
Commentary: Edward Gauvin (2012).

PDF (6 MB, updated on 2016-10-7)