J.K. Huysmans was the writer of the French Fin de siècle. His masterpiece was Against Nature - forever associated with the trial of Oscar Wilde - more or less defined the taste of the Decadents. Essentially a writer of disillusion, Huysmans' books chart his autobiographical hero's attempt, and failure, to find some meaning in life. Another novel La Bas (Down There) described the hero's involvement in Satanism. Between these two seminal works Huysmans wrote another: Becalmed (En Rade) - it is their connecting link.