Because Nausea is dense with philosophical arguments, listening to it requires a different strategy than a standard fiction thriller.
Slowly, inexplicably, objects begin to lose their names. A pebble, a beer glass, the sticky handle of a door—these things stop being "things" and become terrifying, alien presences. Roquentin experiences a dizzying, sickening revelation: existence has no reason. The world is not a logical machine; it is a soft, grotesque, superfluous mass. nausea jean paul sartre audiobook
This realization manifests as a physical sensation—the Nausea. It is a "pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which 'spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time... like an oil stain'". For Roquentin, everything that was once familiar—a stone, a beer glass, the root of a chestnut tree—becomes alien, horrifying, and superfluous. The novel is a masterful depiction of the crisis that occurs when the comforting veil of habit and meaning is ripped away, leaving a person to face the raw, contingent reality of simply being . It is a "pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea