Nausea is considered to be the seminal text of French existential philosophy. The influence of Nausea, along with Sartre's other writings, on twentieth-century thought has been profound and pervasive. Roquentin's philosophical dilemma, as expressed in Nausea, has been regarded as representative of the experience of modern life in the twentieth century. As Hayden Carruth, in an introduction to an English translation of Nausea, remarked, "Nausea gives us a few of the clearest and hence most useful images of man in our time that we possess," adding, "The power of Sartre's fiction resides in the truth of our lives as he has written it."

Critics generally agreed that, in Nausea, Sartre effectively utilizes the medium of fiction to explore philosophical ideas that he would later develop in Being and Nothingness. However, critical opinions have varied on the question of how successful Nausea is as a work of...