title: The Decadent Reader: Fiction, Fantasy, and Perversion from Fin-de-Si&egrave;cle France
author: Asti Hustvedt
description: The end of the 20th century has renewed an interest in the end of the 19th century, in particular the aesthetes and fin-de-siecle writers of France who influenced writers like Oscar Wilde and pointed toward modernists such as James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot. Coined by Baudelaire to describe Edgar Allan Poe, Decadence represented an aesthetic/aristocratic attack on bourgeois culture, exploring themes of art, deviance, perversion, and marginalization. Editor Hustvedt has collected translations of 12 short novels or selections by Barbey d'Aurevilly, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, Remy de Gourmont, and six others. Each selection includes an introduction by the translator. Hustvedt has performed a valuable service by providing this rich assortment of materials not otherwise readily available. Recommended for public and academic libraries.?T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah, <BR>Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events,
  and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used
  fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual
  events is purely coincidental.
  
  
  Text copyright © 2012 by Johary Ravaloson
  
  
  Translation copyright © 2019 by Allison M. Charette
  
  
  All rights reserved.
  
  
  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or
  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
  recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
  
  
  Previously published as _Les larmes d’Ietsé_ by Éditions Dodo vole in France
  in 2012. Translated from French by Allison M. Charette. First published in
  English by Amazon Crossing in 2019. An excerpt from this book was previously
  published in _Tupelo Quarterly,_ no. 9.
  
  
  Excerpt from page vii of the