In Jean-Paul Sartre’s first novel, Nausea, the protagonist, Roquentin, suffers a strange “sweet sickness” that is the physical manifestation of a deep existential malaise. Phillip Notman, the hero of Rupert Thomson’s How to Make a Bomb, is, like Roquentin, an academic researching a biography of an obscure historical figure. Like Roquentin, he is struck by a sudden and paralysing nausea, one that threatens to capsize his apparently ordered existence. Like Roquentin, he seeks solace in a woman’s love. Thomson’s 14 novels are overwhelmingly disparate, sharing only a profound regard for style, an engagement with the European avant garde tradition, and an interest in the secret and occluded corners of life.
