J. K. Huysmans
Description
This is the first new translation of En Route since C. Kegan Paul's expurgated original of 1895, which censored or completely cut sections dealing wit
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h Durtal's sexual obsessions. Restoring these cuts serves to heighten the drama surrounding Durtal's existential crisis, and gives the novel a perspective that has hitherto been lacking for English-speaking readers. En Route was J.-K. Huysmans' first novel after his conversion to Catholicism and effectively opens a trilogy of novels detailing the spiritual journey of his alter-ego protagonist, Durtal.
The novel caused a sensation on its first publication, not just because of the surprisingly frank descriptions of Durtal's obsessive sexual thoughts, but also because Huysmans' was still best known as a disciple of Zola's Naturalist school and few expected this frank and detailed account of a conversion from a writer who only a few years previously had scandalized the Parisian literary world with his Satanic novel of 1891, La-bas.
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