Written just after the devastating Spanish Civil War and published right before the outbreak of World War II, Nausea addressed and anticipated the themes of anguish and despair that would come to define the horrors of the twentieth century. Sartre used the novel to expose the bare existence of objects and people. The novel s protagonist, Antoine Roquentin, is horrified to first confront the overwhelming existence of both objects and himself (instead of their essences) and then discover that there is to purpose to existence.
Instead, he finds only nothingness: a vacuum filled by questions of free will, self-deception, and responsibility that still influence approaches to art and philosophy today.
Jean-Paul Sartre, philosopher, critic, novelist and dramatist, hold a position of singular eminence in the world of French letters.
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