Nausea

Nausea is above all one of Sartre’s first works, and one of the very first existentialist manifestos. This novel takes place in the city of Le Havre, in the 1930s. The protagonist, Antoine Roquentin, leads an uninteresting life that takes him from Bouville to Paris, trying to write a historical book dealing with the life of the Marquis de Rollebon or even to reconnect with a woman who was once his lover. Lonely, he has far too much free time to think. He will be nauseous. The latter occurs like an epileptic seizure: certain signals make it possible to suspect its arrival, without however ever being able to be certain of the probability: Antoine Roquentin observes objects and people until he lets himself be hypnotized by them.