Grasping peasants and a crumbling chateau make life hell in the countryside. J.-K. Huysmans’ Stranded (En Rade 1887), published just three years after the iconoclastic Against Nature, sees him again breaking new ground and pushing back the boundaries of the novel form. Stamped throughout with his characteristic black humour, Stranded is one of Huysmans’ most innovative, most imaginative works. Jacques’ waking reveries and daydreams are balanced by a succession of dreams and nightmares that explore the seemingly irrational, often grotesque, world of unconscious desire, producing a series of images that are as unforgettable and unsettling as anything to be found in the decadent fantasies of Against Nature, or the satanic obsessions of Là-bas.