Sartre Books in Order: A Reading Path That Works
Jean-Paul Sartre is the only philosopher on our existentialism reading guide who was also a Nobel-caliber novelist and playwright (he won the Prize in 1964 and declined it). That is good news for readers: you can meet his entire philosophy through fiction and drama before touching the famously difficult Being and Nothingness. Here is the order that works.
- Start with the lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism is short, clear, and states the core ideas in plain language.
- Fiction before philosophy Nausea, The Wall, and No Exit carry the ideas with far less technical strain than Being and Nothingness.
- Freedom is the through-line “Existence precedes essence” — we are condemned to be free and responsible for what we make of ourselves.
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#1: Existentialism Is a Humanism — START HERE
Jean-Paul Sartre
The famous public lecture: existence precedes essence, we are condemned to be free, and we are responsible for what we make of ourselves. Sixty-odd pages, zero jargon.
- The clearest short statement of ‘existence precedes essence’ — delivered as a public lecture in plain language
- About 50 pages of core text; readable in a sitting
- The Yale edition adds the post-lecture Q&A and Sartre’s essay on Camus’ The Stranger
- The ideal first Sartre by wide consensus
- Sartre himself later regretted its simplifications — treat it as a doorway, not the doctrine
- A very short book at full trade price; buyers regularly note the thin page count
- The appended discussion section is dry compared to the lecture
#2: Nausea — THE NOVEL
Jean-Paul Sartre
Antoine Roquentin discovers that existence is raw, contingent, and de trop — and so does the reader. The definitive existentialist novel and Sartre’s own favorite of his books.
- The essential existentialist novel — contingency and absurdity dramatized rather than argued
- Short, and the chestnut-tree passage is one of the tradition’s touchstones
- Lloyd Alexander’s New Directions translation is the long-standing US standard
- Deliberately plotless — a diary of disgust; a visible share of readers do not finish it
- The 1949 translation shows its age, with British idioms that sit oddly in a French diary
- The middle third is a slog even for sympathetic readers
#3: No Exit — 90 MINUTES
Jean-Paul Sartre
Three people, one locked room, eternity — the source of “hell is other people,” which means the opposite of what most people think. Read it in a sitting.
- ‘Hell is other people’ in a play you can read in 45 minutes
- The Vintage volume includes three more plays — The Flies, Dirty Hands, The Respectful Prostitute — for one price
- Drama is the fastest route into Sartre’s ideas about the gaze and bad faith
- Most buyers come for No Exit alone; the other three plays are noticeably weaker
- The dated rendering of dialect in The Respectful Prostitute reads offensively today
#4: The Wall — Best for short fiction with full impact
Jean-Paul Sartre
Five stories about people at the edge — a condemned prisoner, a madman, a childhood — each dramatizing bad faith and freedom. The most underrated entry point to Sartre.
- The title story — a man awaiting execution at dawn — is Sartre’s fiction at its sharpest
- Five stories showing bad faith and freedom in the flesh, each readable in one sitting
- A better bridge to Being and Nothingness than Nausea for time-poor readers
- The closing novella, ‘The Childhood of a Leader,’ is long and disturbing, and unprepared readers regularly say so
- The collection is uneven; the title story towers over the rest
- The translation is old and occasionally stiff
#5: Being and Nothingness — THE MOUNTAIN
Jean-Paul Sartre
The 700-page systematic statement: consciousness, freedom, bad faith, the look of the Other. Genuinely hard — but the famous café waiter passage alone repays the climb.
- The complete system: bad faith, the Look, radical freedom — everything else Sartre wrote is footnotes to this
- The chapters on bad faith and the gaze are readable on their own and are what therapists actually use
- Hazel Barnes’ translation kept it in English print for seventy years
- Brutally difficult — most readers stall in the introduction; reader forums are unanimous on skipping it and returning later
- The Barnes translation is contested; Sarah Richmond’s 2018 version is now preferred by scholars, so know which one you are buying
- 800+ pages of small print on thin paper in the Washington Square edition
#6: The Words — THE MEMOIR
Jean-Paul Sartre
Sartre’s ruthless, beautiful memoir of his bookish childhood — the work that helped win him the Nobel Prize he refused. Best read last, when you know what he became.
- Sartre’s autobiography of childhood — his most polished, controlled prose
- Shows where the ideas about self-invention came from; the philosophy’s origin story
- Short, and the writing earned him the Nobel he refused
- Covers only his first eleven years, then stops — readers expecting a life get a childhood
- The relentless self-irony reads cold to many; he dissects rather than remembers
Sartre and the therapy tradition
Sartre’s ideas — radical freedom, responsibility, bad faith — flow directly into existential psychotherapy. Yalom’s treatment of the “freedom” given in Existential Psychotherapy is essentially applied Sartre; see The Four Givens Explained for how clinicians use it.
How to choose your way into Sartre
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Fiction or philosophy firstThe novels and plays carry the same ideas at a tenth of the effort.Look forThe lecture, then Nausea or the plays, then the treatiseAvoidOpening Being and Nothingness first — its introduction is the stall point
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Translation vintageMuch US Sartre still circulates in 1940s–60s translations.Look forRichmond's 2018 Being and Nothingness if you're buying the treatise newAvoidAssuming all editions of a title carry the same text
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Difficulty rampSartre scales from a 50-page lecture to an 800-page system — use the ramp.Look forOne step up in difficulty per bookAvoidJumping two steps and abandoning the project
How we chose these books
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Firsthand reading
Rankings start from our editors’ full reads of every title on the list — including the slow middles and the failed first attempts — not from publisher copy.
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Reader-review analysis
We mined verified-purchase reviews, Goodreads consensus, and Reddit reading threads for recurring, specific complaints: print size, abridgments, translation quality, abandonment points.
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Edition comparison
Where multiple translations or editions exist, we compared them and linked the printing most readers should actually buy — and flagged the known trade-offs.
Do I need Being and Nothingness to understand Sartre?
No. The lecture, Nausea, and No Exit give you all the core ideas. The big book adds depth and rigor, not new fundamentals.
Sartre or Camus first?
Sartre if you want philosophy stated directly; Camus if you prefer spare, beautiful fiction. They pair naturally — and famously fell out, which makes reading both more fun.
Bottom line
Sartre’s ideas about freedom and bad faith flow directly into existential therapy. Read him in order and the difficulty curve stays manageable.