Là-bas (novel)

Là-Bas (French pronunciation: [la ba]), translated as Down There or The Damned, is a novel by the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans, first published in 1891. It is Huysmans's most famous work after À rebours. Là-Bas deals with the subject of Satanism in contemporary France, and the novel stirred controversy on its first appearance. It is the first of Huysmans's books to feature the character Durtal, a thinly disguised portrait of the author himself, who would go on to be the protagonist of Huysmans's subsequent novels En route, La cathédrale and L'oblat.