Jean-Paul Sartre
2 books analyzed
Biography
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was born in Paris, studied philosophy at the Ecole Normale Superieure, and spent a formative year in Berlin in 1933-34 studying Husserl and Heidegger's phenomenology. Nausea was written during this period and published in 1938, when Sartre was 32. The novel was turned down by several publishers, finally accepted by Gallimard with editorial encouragement from the novelist and thinker Jean Paulhan. It was an immediate critical success. Sartre drew directly on his experience of Le Havre (where he taught philosophy) for Bouville, and on his own experience of depersonalization and alienation from objects for Roquentin's nausea. The decisive philosophical influences were Husserl's phenomenology and Heidegger's Being and Time, both encountered in Berlin.
Jean-Paul Sartre at a glance
Works
Nausea
1938 · 253 pages · ★★★★☆ Advanced
A man picks up a pebble on a beach and suddenly cannot put it down — because he realizes, for the first time, that existence has no reason to exist.
No Exit
1944 · 46 pages · ★★★☆☆ Challenging
Three damned souls locked in a drawing room discover that hell needs no torture chambers -- only other people.