James Doyle

Rowan Pelling

Amelia Hodsdon

50 decadent courtiers contribute essays, stories, poems, reminiscences, and advice on decadent themes in an anti-lifestyle guide for the modern libertine. Readers can transform the spirit of the age, or failing that, ignore it altogether. Featuring contributions by the bad, dangerous and eccentric free spirits of contemporary society have chosen to be remunerated with Absinthe. Decadence here means a kind of colourfully reckless nonconformism. Nick Groom's essay on Decadent Outcasts, in which he demonstrates how the image of the decadent poet has been appropriated by the modern rock star, is not to your taste, then there is always Louise Welsh planning her own funeral to savour and enjoy - or Mick Brown's analysis of the film Performance, William Napier's guide to Roman Decadence in which he relates that the Emperor Heliogabulus's favourite foods were 'flamingos' brains and the head of parakeets', or Nicholas Royles noirish short story 'The Child', about a man sucked into a Mancunian underworld of cinephiles, sex parties and bent coppers. Maria Alvarez even suggest sthat decadence may turn out to be a little dull. In the end, she says, it becomes 'a state of aestheticised satiety.'

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