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.
zlib_text: Praise for Zone
  
  “The novel of the decade, if not of the century.”
  
  —Christophe Claro
  
  “A modern Iliad. . . . You turn the pages as if it were a great thriller. . .
  . A great novel. You must read it!”
  
  —François Busnel, TV5, France
  
  “Zone is a major and compelling work, a work that will keep you in its grip
  from its first utterance to its last.”
  
  —Brian Evenson
  
  “A powerful read, a novel for the ages.”
  
  —François Monti, Quarterly Conversation
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright
  
  Copyright © 2008 by Mathias Énard
  
  Translation copyright © 2010 by Charlotte Mandell
  
  Introduction copyright © 2010 by Brian Evenson
  
  Originally published in France as Zone by Actes Sud, 2008
  
  First edition, 2010
  
  First digital edition, 2013
  
  All rights reserved
  
  This work, published as part of a program providing publication assistance,
  received financial support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the
  Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, and FACE (French
  American Cultural Exchange).
  
  www.frenc