Recommendations
Books Like Huis clos by Jean-Paul Sartre
No Exit — 'hell is other people' in a Second Empire drawing room for eternity
Sartre's 1944 one-act play — three dead people in a bourgeois Second Empire drawing room discovering that hell is the inescapable gaze of the other; 'l'enfer, c'est les autres'; the most performed French play of the twentieth century.
- 1
Buy on AmazonLa Nausée
by Jean-Paul Sartre
The companion novel (1938) — Roquentin's nausea and Huis clos share the same existentialist thesis about consciousness, freedom, and the Other; reading both together gives the novelistic and theatrical versions of the same philosophical discovery.
- 2
Buy on AmazonLa Cantatrice chauve
by Eugène Ionesco
Ionesco's 1950 one-act is the Theatre of the Absurd companion — both Huis clos and La Cantatrice chauve are one-acts that demonstrate philosophical positions through theatrical form; comparing them gives the range from existentialist to absurdist theatre.
- 3
Buy on AmazonEn attendant Godot
by Samuel Beckett
Beckett's 1953 play is the most important theatrical parallel — Vladimir and Estragon's waiting has the same quality of endlessly repeated non-arrival as the drawing room hell; both are plays in which nothing happens, twice, but the form of the nothing is completely different.
- 4
Buy on AmazonLes Mouches
by Jean-Paul Sartre
The Flies (1943) — Sartre's Orestes play written the year before Huis clos and under the Occupation; the most politically explicit of the Sartre plays; reading Les Mouches and Huis clos together gives the range of the early Sartre theatre.
- 5
Buy on AmazonL'Être et le Néant
by Jean-Paul Sartre
Being and Nothingness (1943) — the philosophical work published the same year; the section on 'the Look' (le Regard) is the theoretical account of what Huis clos dramatizes; reading the relevant section of L'Être et le Néant alongside the play gives the fullest understanding of 'hell is other people.'
- 6Buy on Amazon
Closed Circuit
by Adam Thirlwell
Thirlwell's 2005 novel Politics is a contemporary riff on the Huis clos dynamic — three people whose desires and self-images are mutually incompatible; the comparison shows how the existentialist theatrical situation translates into contemporary fiction.
- 7
Buy on AmazonThe Birthday Party
by Harold Pinter
Pinter's 1958 play is the most important English-language response to Sartre's theatre — the claustrophobic pressure of the other's gaze, the impossibility of escaping judgment, the violence hidden beneath social convention; comparing Huis clos and The Birthday Party gives the range of what the gaze can do in theatre.
- 8
Buy on AmazonLe Diable et le bon dieu
by Jean-Paul Sartre
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951) — Sartre's largest play, about the impossibility of existing in the eyes of both God and man; the fullest theatrical version of the existentialist thesis about freedom and the Other; read after Huis clos and Les Mouches.
More Huis clos by Jean-Paul Sartre Resources
More Reading Recommendations
View all →Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.