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La NauséeNausea Reading Order
Nausea (1938) by Jean-Paul Sartre — La Nausée in French — is the philosophical novel that launched existentialism as a cultural movement and simultaneously the work that demonstrated what philosophical fiction could do: Antoine Roquentin, a historian living in the fictional port city of Bouville, begins to experience a terrifying sensation of alienation — the Nausea — as everyday objects (a chestnut tree root, a door handle, a pebble on a beach) reveal their brute, contingent existence to him, their complete indifference to any human meaning he might project onto them. The novel is structured as Roquentin's diary, and it traces his progressive understanding of the Nausea as the discovery of existence itself — the fact that things exist without reason, purpose, or necessity. Sartre published Nausea before he had developed his existentialist philosophy formally, but the novel contains in embryonic form every major idea of Being and Nothingness (1943): existence precedes essence, consciousness is not a thing but a relation, freedom is inseparable from anxiety.
Where to start
Nausea (1938) — the complete novel; no prequel required. Available in a translation by Lloyd Alexander (1964, New Directions) and a newer translation by James Wood (2013, New Directions) — the Wood translation is the current recommendation. After Nausea: Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1943) for the philosophical argument in full, and The Roads to Freedom trilogy (The Age of Reason, The Reprieve, Troubled Sleep) for Sartre's later fiction
Complete La Nausée Book List
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Nausea
Jean-Paul Sartre·1938
La Nausée — Frequently Asked Questions
What is the meaning of the 'Nausea' in Sartre's novel?
The Nausea in Sartre's novel is Roquentin's experience of encountering objects — a chestnut tree root, a pebble, a door handle — and suddenly perceiving them as they 'really are': as brute, contingent existences, without purpose or reason for being, beyond any human meaning he might assign to them. The Nausea is the direct perception of the 'absurd' — the gap between the human desire for meaning and purpose and the actual indifference of things to that desire. Roquentin discovers that objects simply exist — they are 'too much,' overflowing any concept or classification he applies to them — and that the meanings he has projected onto them are his own constructions, without foundation in the things themselves. The Nausea is Sartre's phenomenological intuition before he had fully developed the philosophical vocabulary to describe it: it became, in Being and Nothingness, the distinction between being-in-itself (the opaque existence of things) and being-for-itself (the translucent self-awareness of consciousness), and the discovery that consciousness is not a thing but a negation — a hole in being.
How does Nausea relate to Sartre's existentialist philosophy?
Nausea was published in 1938, five years before Being and Nothingness (1943), and contains in novelistic form the core intuitions that Sartre would develop into his systematic existentialist philosophy. The key ideas that appear in both works: existence precedes essence (Roquentin's discovery that things simply exist without a predetermined nature or purpose — they are, before they are anything in particular); the contingency of existence (there is no reason why anything exists rather than nothing); consciousness as a 'nothing' (Roquentin's self-awareness is not a thing but a relation to things); and the freedom that is inseparable from the discovery of contingency (Roquentin is free, which means he is responsible for what he makes of himself, which is terrifying). Sartre considered Nausea the best illustration of existentialist ideas for general readers, and it is still the most readable entry into his thought — the philosophy felt before it is argued.
Is Nausea the same as The Stranger by Camus?
Nausea (Sartre, 1938) and The Stranger (Camus, 1942) are the two great existentialist novels of the French tradition and are often paired, but they are significantly different in approach and conclusion. Both feature protagonists who experience the absurd — the gap between human desire for meaning and the world's indifference to that desire — but they respond to it differently. Roquentin's Nausea leads him toward the discovery that consciousness itself is a kind of freedom: the very absence of given meaning is what makes self-creation possible. Meursault in The Stranger moves through the world without the inner life that produces Roquentin's Nausea — he simply does not register the meanings others take for granted — and his confrontation with the absurd comes not in solitary meditation but through his murder of an Arab and his subsequent trial. Camus's absurd is ultimately a different philosophical position from Sartre's existentialism: Camus rejected the existentialist label and argued that Sartre's move from 'there is no given meaning' to 'therefore I must create meaning' was an illegitimate leap. Reading both novels together is the best introduction to this debate.
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