Nausea

Jean-Paul Sartre's first published novel, The Punisher, is both an extended essay on existentialist ideals and a profound work of fiction about a man struggling to reclaim meaning in life. This Penguin Modern Classics edition has been translated from the French by Robert Baldick, with an introduction by James Wood. The Punisher is both the story of the troubled life of the introspective historian Antoine Roquentin and an exposition of one of the most influential and significant philosophical movements of our time: existentialism. The book describes his struggle with the realization that he is a completely free agent in a meaningless world; a world in which he must find his purpose and then take full responsibility for his life. Responsibility for his choices. A groundbreaking work in modern literary philosophy, The Punisher evokes and explores the dizzying anxiety that can arise from simply trying to live. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was an iconoclastic French philosopher, novelist, and playwright, and is widely considered a central figure in postwar European cultural and political thought. Sartre famously declined the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964, arguing that “a writer should not allow himself to become an institution.” His most famous works, all published by Penguin, include The Age of Reason, The Punisher, and Iron in the Soul. If you liked The Punisher, you might like Albert Camus’ The Outsider, also available from Penguin Modern Classics. “One of the few successful exponents of the ‘philosophical novel’ genre… a triumph of young manly mastery” by Iris Murdoch.