First published in 1884, Joris-Karl Huysmans's Gegen den Strich (Against the Grain) is often called the bible of the Decadent movement. Forget epic adventures—this novel is an interior journey into the mind of one of fiction's most memorable characters.

The Story

The plot is simple on the surface. Jean des Esseintes, the last, frail heir of a noble family, is utterly worn out by Parisian society. He finds people vulgar, nature boring, and conventional pleasures meaningless. So, he sells his estate, buys a secluded house on the outskirts of Paris, and retreats from the world. His goal? To design a life of perfect, artificial beauty. The "story" is really a catalog of his experiments. He studies rare Latin texts, creates a symphony of liqueurs, cultivates flowers that look like they're made of metal or disease, and even tries to train a tortoise to walk on gemstones. Each chapter details a new sensory obsession. But his greatest creation—his isolated, controlled paradise—starts to crack. His health fails, his nerves fray, and the real world, in all its messy imperfection, keeps knocking at his door.

Why You Should Read It

You read this book for the atmosphere and the ideas, not for a twisting plot. Des Esseintes is a monster of taste, but a strangely relatable one. Haven't we all wanted to curate our own little world, free from annoyances? Huysmans writes with incredible detail, making you smell the strange perfumes and see the bizarre colors of des Esseintes's collections. The book is a profound, and sometimes darkly comic, look at what happens when aesthetic pleasure becomes the only religion. It asks if beauty can save us, or if it just isolates us further. Reading it feels like wandering through a museum of someone else's magnificent, crumbling mind.

Final Verdict

This is perfect for readers who love character studies and rich, descriptive prose. If you enjoyed the psychological depth of Dostoevsky or the aesthetic obsession in Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, you'll find a predecessor here. It's also a great pick for anyone interested in the roots of modernism or the history of "weird" literature. A word of warning: it's not a breezy read. It demands your attention as it luxuriates in descriptions of church history, forgotten poets, and flower petals. But if you surrender to its peculiar rhythm, you'll experience a novel that truly lives up to its title—it goes completely against the grain.