Books like La -bas by Joris-Karl Huysmans

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a philosophical novel by Irish writer Oscar Wilde, first appearing as a novella in 1890 and expanded into a full novel in 1891.

In 19th‑century rural France, country doctor Charles Bovary marries the ambitious Emma, whose longing for romance and luxury drives her into affairs and reckless spending, spiraling her into ruin and social disgrace.

À rebours follows the reclusive aesthete Jean des Esseintes as he withdraws from society, curates an art-filled home, and reflects on the cultural decadence of late 19th‑century France.

"Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann, who demolished and rebuilt Paris in the middle of the nineteenth century, was the first urbanist of the modem era - and perhaps the greatest. He presided over two decades of riches, peace, and progress in a city the likes of which no one had ever seen before, with boulevards monumentally conceived and brilliantly lit, clean water, public transportation, and sewers that were the envy of every nation in the world. Yet there is a story that, on his deathbed, Haussmann wished all his work undone. "Would that it had died with me!" he is supposed to have said. What is the secret of the baron's last regret?". "To answer this question, Haussmann tells the story of Madeleine, a foundling who grew up in the magical, chaotic world that Haussmann destroyed; of de Fonce, one of the great artistes demolisseurs who tore Paris down and sold its rubble as antiques; and of a three-sided affair that pits love against ambition, architecture against flesh, and the living Parisians against Haussmann's unbuilt masterpiece, the Railroad of the Dead.". "Although steeped in history, the novel is not bound by fact; it is an account of the hidden, sometimes fantastical life of the nineteenth century, a work that will make readers think of Borges as well as Balzac; it is a view of cities, of love, and of history itself from the other side of the mirror."--BOOK JACKET.