Existentialism

American author Walker Percy’s 1961 novel The Moviegoer tells a poignant and humorous existential story. The plot concerns a young man who tries to find meaning for his life at the movies, with no satisfaction.

Dangling Man (1944) was Nobel laureate Saul Bellow’s first novel. It presents a young man in the existential limbo of having been drafted into the army and waiting to be called up.

The Plague, by Albert Camus, examines how people react to an outbreak of bubonic plague in the north African town of Oran, Algeria. The range of human behaviors covered in this novel are as relevant today as they were when it was published in 1947.

Students often find Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophical writings dense and unintelligible, but the essays in his book Existentialism and Human Emotions are chosen to introduce the philosophy to broad audiences.

Thus Spake Zarathustra is philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s lively, loose-knit allegorical exploration of the relationship between humanity and the world, considered to be the masterpiece of his formidable career. Nietzsche does not directly lecture but instead presents vignettes, mysteries, and riddles, laying the foundation for the existential...