Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre wrote La Nausée in 1938 while he was a college professor. It is one of the best-known novels of Sartre.
The Kafka-influenced novel concerns a dejected researcher in a town similar to Le Havre who becomes convinced that inanimate objects and situations encroach on his ability to define himself, on his intellectual and spiritual freedom, evoking in the protagonist a sense of nausea.
It is widely considered one of the cannonical works of existentialism. It won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964.
It was translated into English by Lloyd Alexander (New York: New Directions, 1964).
