Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

Name: Jean-Paul Sartre

Year Won: 1964

Read: Nausea

Original Language: French

Reason: "for his work, which rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age"

About: "Nausea" is a story about existentialism. Seriously. There's sort of a protagonist who find himself all alone and feeling nausous at a number of things. He also goes out to dinner and talks about philosophy a lot. Seriously. A lot.

What I liked: The writing can be very lovely. Sartre is very good at creating a sense of impending doom.

What I Disliked: There honestly isn't much of a plot. It's just a dude observing things and feeling unsettled. For over a hundred pages. It's more or less "this is my philosophy, told as a novel" which, to be frank, was done more gracefully and subtly in "Atlas Shrugged" (which is saying very, very little).

Should it have won a Nobel: For this alone, no. It's not a very good book in my mind (I'm sure others will differ, but from the perspective of a novel being a novel, it SUCKS). But Sartre is a pretty big deal from a philosophy perspective and other works of his (like "No Exit") are classics for a reason. So he probably deserves it, but I would not pick "Nausea" as something to read a second time. (Or even a first.) I can see why it was widely rejected by publishers after it was written.

Next Up: "Tales of the Don" by Mikhail Sholokhov