The Damned (La-Bas)

Huysmans's gaudy, shocking and largely autobiographical novel La-Bas was described by one critic as 'even more disquieting' than his masterpiece, A Rebours (Against Nature). It follows Durtal, a shy, censorious man, who is writing a biography of Gilles de Rais, the fifteenth-century child murderer and supposed original for 'Bluebeard'. Durtal is bored and disgusted by the vulgarity of everyday life and seeks spiritual solace by immersing himself in another age. But when he meets the exquisitely evil Madame Chantelouve, he is drawn into the twilight world of black magic and erotic devilry in fin-de-siecle Paris.