I recently read Jean-Paul Sartre's book Nausea. It was the greatest book I have read in a long long time, he writes so well and really gets to the heart of the humanity in the story, bringing out the underlying feelings of his character like no-one I have read before. His writing style (in this book at least) is similar to that of Virginia Woolf in that it is stream of consciousness, however in Nausea everything happens inside the head of the protagonist, rather than drifting about from one person to another.

It centres around Antoine Roquentin who is writing a book about some 18th century historical character, he seems to have enough income to not need to get a proper job so he just hangs around in cafés and goes to the library every day to write his book. You get the impression he hasn't really spoken to anyone in months, if not years; he says himself:

When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.

The book orbits around him, as a recluse, coming to a revelation about his life and existence, giving a "real-life" outworking of Sartre's own existential philosophy. The weight of his experience, described in magnificent detail, just blew me away; Sartre really gets into Antoine's head and brings out a whole load of things I had never properly thought about. I can't say I followed his feelings all the way through, I found myself getting more distant from him as the book went on, but I definitely caught a glimpse of what might possibly be going on in the back of my head behind my thoughts.

Here's an example of one of his descriptions, as Antoine is sitting in a café listening to the music:

For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves…. I would like to hold them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stopping one, there would only remain in may hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions.