ABSTRACT
When Nausea appeared, Jean-Paul Sartre was at an early point in his career as a philosopher and literary critic: he had written none of the dramas that would bring him fame, and he had not yet assumed his later roles of militant political journalist, spokesman, and activist. Whereas from the late 1940S on, his name would be recognized by hundreds of thousands and then millions, in the mid-1930S he was known only to a few, as a teacher and author of short critical pieces and sketchy, although provocative, philosophical essays. This novel, his first, was an initial step in carrying out his youthful resolution to become great through literature. It is now viewed by critics (except hostile ones, still numerous-for he succeeded in his aim of being offensive) as highly original, his best fiction, excepting perhaps the stories collected in Le Mur (1939; The Wall).
