Baldick, Robert

Des Esseintes is a neurasthenic aristocrat who has turned his back on the vulgarity of modern life and retreated to an isolated country villa, where he pursues his obsessions with exotic flowers, rare gems and complex perfumes. The original handbook of decadence, this novel enjoys a cult following.

Set in Paris during the last years of World War One, this is one of the finest, most delicate love stories ever written. The narrator, a boy of 16, tells of his love affair with a young woman whose husband is away at the Front.

This novel is both the story of the troubled life of a young writer, Antoine Roquentin, and an exposision of one of the most influential and significant philosophical attitudes of modern times - existentialism.

In this story of a young man's romantic attachment to an older woman, the modern English reader can appreciate the accuracy, the artistry and the insight which Flaubert reconstructed in one masterpiece.