This extremely specific trend was born in Tumblr of the 2010’s, but exploded into TikTok back in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic when schools, and all things academia related, came to a halt. Dark academia is an aesthetic and subculture trend with a heavy emphasis in nostalgia, knowledge, power, elitism, and maximalism. Many fashion stylists have deemed this trend a “melancholic aesthetic,” and what’s funny about this trend is that it’s present in architecture, fashion, literature, philosophy; dark academia has a very strong taste, reason why it’s easy to recognize. In terms of the literary trend, Dark Academia can be traced back to Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray and Maurice by E.M. Foster, with early 19th century aesthetics and a “shadowy extravagance.” Books that enter this subculture almost always include the following: a heavy Greek/Classics influence, Gothic/Medieval architecture (think Oxford University), cold and/or autumn-like environments, dense/cluttered rooms, old libraries, higher education, elitism and the infinite rot that exist in elitist societies, old money, and a deadly search for knowledge and power. What all of these books have in common is that every (perfectionist) character is faced with the questions of:
How far will you go to obtain power?
What part of yourself will you kill in order to achieve perfection?
These characters also face things every college student eventually grows used to: sleep deprivation, unhealthy behaviors, substance abuse, and all the symptoms of burnout before they reach the life crisis we all knew they were headed for. Cottagecore, classicism, goth romanticism, and Neo-victorian are also clear influences of this genre, and while it’s not the most healthy read, I do love some toxicity in my novels every once in a while. Below you’ll find a few of my favorite Dark Academia recs, along with a few honorary mentions:
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- The Atlas Six by Olivia Blake
- The Ninth House and Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo
- Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R.F. Kuang
- If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
- The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
- Bunny by Mona Awad
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
This book has been a sort-of-phenomenon for the last 30 years, and it’s supposed to be the one who initiated the Dark Academia sub-genre. Most people either love or absolutely hate it, there’s no middle ground with Tartt’s novel. Now as for the book itself, it’s firmly grounded in 20th century hetero-masculinity, it has some very deep conversation about almost any subject you can think of, and it shines the splendor of a bygone era. The story (supposedly) takes place in the 1980s but it definitely feels like it’s early 1900s due to its descriptive style (Bunny’s way of speaking, for example, reminded me of Jay Gatsby more than once). Set in Hampden College in Vermont, The Secret History is an “inverted detective story” narrated by one of the six protagonists, who are all students of Julian Morrow’s ultra-exclusive Ancient Greek class (the class only has five students before Richard arrives). Richard Papen is a scholarship student at the elite Hampden College from Plano, California. As the book’s narrator, he begins the story reflecting on Bunny Corcoran’s death many years after the incident. The book is divided in Book 1, which explains the events previous to Bunny’s death, and Book 2, which depicts the aftermath. This book is about many things, but it’s mainly about the “longing for the picturesque,” meaning the idealization of elitism, power, outer appearances, class. “Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.” This obsession with appearances and power eventually leads to murder, suicide, and many dramatic outbursts.
* No magic, set in real-world setting
I like to think of The Atlas Six and The Atlas Paradox like a mental exercise. We have six main characters and each chapter is told in their different perspectives/voices: Nico is young and cheerful, Libby is anxious and thorough, Parisa is distant and devious, Reina is quiet and detached, Callum is egocentric and arrogant, while Tristan is like a dark cloud that never dares to rain. These six (powerful) characters are candidates chosen by the elusive Alexandrian Society, a group of rich, magical intellectuals that seem to control the world’s flow of information, both human and magical. Each of the candidates has a magical specialty, and after the first year is up, only five students will be allowed to enter the Society. This book is very much about power, class, and beauty, much like every other Dark Academia book; it questions how far a person can go in order to achieve their deepest desires. It’s a slow book, given its heavy-handed descriptions and deep dives into each character’s psyche, but it’s not tedious. In fact, it’s the complete opposite given its complex plot twists. I imagine this book series like a braid made of 3 main things: science, magic, and greed. A fair warning: the six protagonists are horrible to each other and to themselves, but this is part of the particular taste of The Atlas Six.
*Lots of magic, heavy-handed writing, and many (many) identity crises
- The Ninth House and Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo
This is a honorary mention, you can read the reviews here and here.
While this book does touch upon classic Dark Academia subjects (power, class, elitism, blah blah), Babel is mostly a celebration of language and the universes contained within each word. This is a high-quality novel, meaning there are years of investigation behind every single scene in this book. R.F. Kuang expands on the meaning of words, their origins, how they interconnect, develop and evolve throughout the years, and the power contained within each word. This fantasy novel centers on Robin Swift, a Canton native who is “extracted” and groomed by an English professor to join the infamous, highly-selective translation program at Oxford University in an alternate 1830s. The power of words relies in the meanings they lose as they translate into different languages: for example, there are 50 different ways of saying the word love, perhaps even more, and every time we translate it into another language the word sheds a layer of meaning and yet it gains complexity. Another unique aspect of this book is that it also focuses on colonialism and its consequences, the hypocrisy behind the idea of invading another land as a way of doing natives a “favor” by stripping them of their culture. This is a fantasy novel, but you will learn a lot about not only language, but about the real history of the British empire and its dark, colonialist past.
*Lots of magic, absolutely no romance, alternate 1830s Victorian England
This novel is perfect for my fellow Shakespeare lovers: the author, M.L. Rio, holds an MA in Shakespeare Studies from King’s College London and Shakespeare’s Globe, and a PhD in English Lit (the dream!) and on top of that, she’s a Shakespearean actor herself. This book is a homage to Shakespeare tragedies and, like a good tragedy, it begins with a murder and a wrongful accusation. Oliver Marks, a man about to be released on parole after ten years behind bars, is approached by a detective who believes he was wrongly incarcerated for the murder of a fellow classmate. The book is structured in five acts which are further divided into scenes, and the jealousy, hatred, lust, and greed interwoven into these pages will keep you glued to these pages. While there isn’t a sequel, the creator of Netflix’s Sex Education is creating this book’s TV show, so we have some hope here *sniffs*
*No magic, all real-life stuff, lots of romance
This isn’t exactly a dark academia book, but the story does spend a lot of time in academic environments and the vampiristic-semi-gothic-Dracula-infused story definitely does give this book a darker tone. The Historian is a historic fiction novel, a re-telling of Dracula’s story and how it traces back to its original protagonist, Vlad the Impaler. When the narrator is sixteen years old, she discovers a mysterious book that connects her family history with that of Vlad Tepes, the 15th-century prince of Wallachia who later inspired Dracula’s legend. This book does a lot of (huge) time jumps, and there are 3 main time periods we read through: 1970s, 1950s and 1930s. On top of that, the book takes us to 19th century Romania, medieval Istanbul, Bulgaria, 1970s Amsterdam, France, etc. The author also employs different narrative tools to tell her story: letters, archives, memoirs, intersexual references to Stoker’s work. And what’s even cooler about this book (according to this nerd) is how thin the line becomes between reality and fiction. This feels like a ghost story, but with a plausible explanation that could happen in real life.
*semi-fantasy but written well enough that it feels like it could happen in our real world
A writer writing about writers sounds like it could easily go wrong, but this novel is extremely refreshing and well-written. Samantha McKay is a writer in an extremely selective MFA program at Warren University where she meets a clique of rich girls who call themselves Bunny for some inexplicable reason. As a scholarship student with a less-privileged background, Samantha is excluded from the Bunnies until one day she receives a surprise invitation to join the group’s writing workshop, called the “Smut Salon.” Here’s when the line between reality and imagination starts blurring, and Samantha’s independence from the Bunnies gradually diminishes until not even the reader knows what’s going on. Awad unfolds the story very purposefully and meticulously; everything happens for a reason, and reading this novel feels like peeling an onion. What’s extremely special about this book is that the writer accomplishes something that other writers often fail to do: she navigates an extremely confusing, disorienting plot while remaining clear and concise about what the central narrative is.
*no magic, a deliciously confusing and bizarre story. Imagine Mean Girls/Gossip girl meets some cult horror movie, and then inject some dynamite into the plot
This isn’t the first novel that comes to mind when thinking of Dark Academia, but Ishiguro’s sixth novel Never Let Me Go is considered his grand masterpiece and a very dark, twisty version of the already-dark trend. The novel, adapted into a movie back in 2010 with Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley, focuses on the purpose of each individual and the things we live life for. In an alternate version of England in the 1990s, there are clinics where human cloning is performed and authorized with the purpose of harvesting organs, unbeknownst to the humans being “harvested.” Kathy, the novel’s main protagonist and a carer for the past twelve years, begins the story by thinking back on her time in Hailsham, a boarding school in England where teachers are known as guardians. Raised in extreme isolation from the world, Kathy meets Ruth and Tommy and forms an unlikely bond with the pair. There are many special things about this novel: the Kafka-esque undertones, the sinister existing in mere sight, the slight allusions to Animal Farm, the idea that one can be complete only at the time of death. However, it’s the dual nature of the ending that will stay for you long after you’ve finished the book.
*similar to A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, like an alternate reality that could make sense
Honorary mentions
- Dead Poets Society by Nancy H. Kleinbaum
- The Latinist by Mark Prins
- The Maidens by Alex Michaelson
- A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
- These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever
- The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
- A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
