Là-Bas (Down There)

A Decadent novel in which the writer Durtal researches the life of Gilles de Rais and is drawn into the occult underworld of 1880s Paris, culminating in the description of a Black Mass. Drawing on Huysmans's own contacts with occultists, it shaped popular images of nineteenth-century Satanism. Essential for students of fin-de-siècle literature and the cultural history of Satanism.