Nausea
First published 1949 · English · 208 pages
- Novels
- Historical fiction
- Philosophy
Nausea is a novel told as the diary of Antoine Roquentin, a solitary historian living in a quiet French port town while he works on a biography. He begins to feel a strange unease as ordinary objects, places and even his own body seem suddenly odd and unnecessary. Roquentin tries to understand what this feeling means, and he observes the townspeople, his own memories and the few people he knows. The book is a vivid first presentation of Sartre's ideas about existence, freedom and the lack of any given meaning, and it remains his most widely read work of fiction.
Quotes
People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. I have no friends. Is that why my flesh is so naked?
I think they do it to pass the time, nothing more. But time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.
I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.
Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.