Sartre’s Nausea follows Antoine Roquentin, a solitary historian in the fictional town of Bouville, as ordinary objects, routines and social encounters begin to lose their inherited meaning and become suddenly, horribly present.

The result is one of the great philosophical novels of the twentieth century: less a “story” in the usual sense than a diary of estrangement, dread, freedom and the awful comedy of consciousness. First published in French as La Nausée in 1938, and translated here by Robert Baldick, this is existentialism before it became a costume. A strange, brilliant, clammy little book. 

Penguin Modern Classics paperback. La Nausée first published by Gallimard in 1938; this Robert Baldick translation first published by Penguin in 1965, with this copy from the 1972 reprint. General vintage wear to cover and edges, with age-toning to pages; binding intact.