This collection of atmospheric journalism reveals the great decadent moving from a broadly naturalistic, almost Dickensian style-as in a 1879 account of the Folies Bergère - to the heightened subjectivity of 'Nightmare, inspired by Odilon Redon: 'blurred infusoria, vague flagellates, Bizarre protoplasms'.
An enthusiast flaneur Huysmans created evocative prose-pictures of Parisian life - a visit to the barber, a gloomy railway cafe, a chestnut-seller - that merit comparison with the pictures of Caillebotte, Degas and Atget. Christopher Hirst in the Independent.