Penguin Modern Classics: Nausea

'Nausea' is both Sartre's first published novel and his first extended essay on the existential philosophy that was to make him world-famous. In it Antoine Roquentin, an introspective historian, records the disturbing shifts in his perceptions and his struggle to restore meaning to life in a continuing present and without lies. Assailed by metaphysical doubts, he attempts to cleanse himself of 'the sin of existing'; the process includes moment of joy as well as of disgust. Wittily observant 'Nausea' is a work of great psychological penetration by one of the most original thinkers of this century.