Nausea

Sartre's greatest novel ? and existentialism's key text ? now introduced by James Wood.

Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which “spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time ? the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain.”

Winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature (though he declined to accept it), Jean-Paul Sartre ? philosopher, critic, novelist, and dramatist ? holds a position of singular eminence in the world of French letters. La Nausée, his first and best novel, is a landmark in Existential fiction and a key work of the twentieth century.

About the Author

Novelist, playwright, and biographer Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) is widely considered one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. His major works include No Exit, Nausea, The Wall, The Age of Reason, Critique of Dialectical Reason, Being and Nothingness, and Roads to Freedom, an allegory of man's search for commitment, and not, as the man at the off-licence says, an everyday story of French country folk.