343 pages
French language
Published 1992 by Actes sud.
"A rebours" is a novel by a French writer (translated: "Against the forward direction"). All the novel is concentrate in one eccentric character and it's inner life: Jean des Esseintes. This upper-class antihero is an aesthete who loath his contemporaries and lives retreated in his once splendid and rich home, where he collects objects of art, reads and comments his readings.