Nausea

A 1938 novel by Jean-Paul Sartre in which Antoine Roquentin’s unsettling experiences expose existence as contingent and without inherent meaning.

Contingency: The condition of being possible but not necessary, rather than inevitable or logically required. Roquentin’s central revelation is that existence has no necessary reason.
Antoine Roquentin: The fictional historian whose diary narrates Nausea. His shifting consciousness provides the novel’s account of existence and contingency.
Jean-Paul Sartre: French philosopher, novelist, playwright, and political writer who lived from 1905 to 1980. Sartre wrote the novel and shaped its philosophical treatment of freedom and existence.
Existentialist literature: Literature that explores themes associated with existentialism, including freedom, responsibility, and meaning. The novel became a landmark work of fiction associated with existentialist themes.
Phenomenology: A philosophical approach that describes structures of experience as they appear to consciousness. The novel tracks how ordinary objects change when Roquentin attends closely to experience.
Diary novel: A novel presented wholly or partly as a character’s dated diary entries. Roquentin’s entries make philosophical change unfold as private, dated experience.
Simone de Beauvoir: French philosopher and writer whose work helped define modern existentialism and feminist thought. Her intellectual partnership with Sartre formed part of the milieu in which the novel took shape.
Existentialism Is a Humanism: Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1946 lecture defending existentialism against religious and Marxist criticism. This later popular account gave public form to ideas the novel explores through fiction.
Absurdism: A philosophical outlook centered on the conflict between human demands for meaning and an indifferent world. It shares the novel’s concern with meaninglessness but is distinct from Sartre’s existentialism.
The chestnut tree root: A root encountered by Antoine Roquentin in a Bouville park in Nausea. Its shapeless presence precipitates Roquentin’s clearest encounter with contingency.

Linked from 2 pages

Philosophical novelBroader topic: Its diary form gives direct narrative shape to an encounter with existence without inherent necessity.