Recommendations
Books Like Là-Bas
Best books to read after Là-Bas by Huysmans
Readers who respond to Là-Bas's investigation of Satanism and the occult, its portrait of Gilles de Rais, and the spiritual journey from aestheticism toward Catholicism will find the wider tradition of French Decadent and occult fiction.
- 1Buy
À Rebours
by Joris-Karl Huysmans
À Rebours is the essential predecessor of Là-Bas: Des Esseintes's aesthetic withdrawal from the world is the starting point from which Durtal's investigation of the occult begins — Là-Bas shows what happens when the Decadent aesthete recognizes that aestheticism alone cannot account for the spiritual reality he is seeking.
- 2Buy
En Route
by Joris-Karl Huysmans
En Route (1895) is the conclusion of Là-Bas's spiritual investigation: where Là-Bas shows Durtal's encounter with Satanism and his recognition that it proves the existence of spiritual reality, En Route shows his conversion to Catholicism as the only adequate framework for that spiritual reality.
- 3Buy
Les Diaboliques
by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
Barbey's 1874 collection of diabolical stories is the most important predecessor of Là-Bas in French Catholic anti-Romantic literature: Barbey's treatment of the demonic as a spiritual reality (rather than a metaphor or a social phenomenon) anticipates Huysmans's investigation of Satanism in Là-Bas.
- 4Buy
The Black Spider
by Jeremias Gotthelf
Gotthelf's 1842 Swiss horror novella treats the demonic as a literal supernatural reality in a way that parallels Là-Bas's serious treatment of Satanism: both works use the horror genre as a vehicle for genuine theological argument about the nature of evil.
- 5Buy
The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
Bulgakov's great Russian novel treats the Devil and his retinue as actual supernatural presences in Soviet Moscow with the same combination of theological seriousness and grotesque comedy that characterizes Huysmans's treatment of Satanism in Là-Bas.
- 6Buy
Dracula
by Bram Stoker
Stoker's 1897 novel, published six years after Là-Bas, shares its serious treatment of the supernatural as a spiritual reality that the rationalist, positivist world of the late nineteenth century is unable to accommodate: both novels argue that materialism is inadequate to account for the full range of human experience.
- 7Buy
La Cathédrale
by Joris-Karl Huysmans
La Cathédrale (1898) is the fourth Durtal novel and shows the spiritual destination that Là-Bas's occult investigation was approaching: Chartres Cathedral as the supreme embodiment of the Catholic aesthetic and spiritual vision that the encounter with Satanism in Là-Bas paradoxically revealed as the true alternative to the demonic.
- 8Buy
The Horla
by Guy de Maupassant
Maupassant's 1887 story about a supernatural presence that takes over the protagonist's mind is the most direct contemporary parallel to Là-Bas's treatment of the occult: both works take seriously the possibility of a supernatural reality that exceeds rational explanation, though Maupassant treats the supernatural as horrifying and Huysmans eventually treats it as revelatory.
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