Recommendations
Books Like No Exit
Best books to read after No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
Readers who love No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre are drawn to its combination of formal elegance, the devastating mechanism by which three people become each other's Hell through the sheer fact of mutual consciousness, and the investigation of what it means to be a being defined by the presence of the Other — they want plays and novels that deal with existentialism, the relationship between consciousness and other people, and the postwar French philosophical drama.
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The Flies
by Jean-Paul Sartre
The companion Sartre play — Orestes and the existentialist refusal of guilt. The companion investigation of the existentialist subject from a different angle: where No Exit shows what Hell looks like from the inside, The Flies shows what authentic freedom looks like when it escapes Hell
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Being and Nothingness
by Jean-Paul Sartre
Sartre's companion philosophical masterwork. No Exit is the theatrical demonstration of the philosophical arguments: the being-for-others, the look, the bad faith — all dramatized in the relationship between Garcin, Inès, and Estelle
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Nausea
by Jean-Paul Sartre
The companion Sartre novel — Roquentin's discovery of the absurdity of existence. The companion investigation of the existentialist subject from a different formal angle: where No Exit dramatizes the relationship between consciousness and the Other, Nausea dramatizes the encounter with sheer contingency
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The Stranger
by Albert Camus
Camus's companion novel — Meursault after the murder. The companion investigation of the same philosophical territory: Meursault and Garcin are companion figures, both men trapped in a situation that reveals the gap between human consciousness and the meanings imposed on it
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Waiting for Godot
by Samuel Beckett
The companion in the postwar European existentialist tradition — two figures stuck. The companion investigation from a different theatrical tradition: where Sartre's room is an explicitly designed Hell with a purpose, Beckett's country road is an existential landscape without any purpose at all
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The Chairs
by Eugène Ionesco
The companion in the Theatre of the Absurd tradition — the empty chairs. The companion theatrical investigation from the absurdist rather than the existentialist tradition: Ionesco's investigation of the gap between meaning and its transmission
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Between Past and Future
by Hannah Arendt
Arendt's companion philosophical essays on the human condition. The companion investigation of what it means to be a political animal constituted by the presence of others, and what happens when the space of political appearance is destroyed
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The Fall
by Albert Camus
Camus's companion novel about Jean-Baptiste Clamence in Amsterdam — a man who confesses his moral failure to a stranger in a bar. The companion investigation of the relationship between consciousness and the judgment of others: Clamence's confession is his attempt to escape the Hell of No Exit by becoming both judge and judged
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