The Five Best Books for a Dark Academia Autumn

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With autumn coloring the leaves and leaving chill in the air, it is the ideal time to find your favorite blanket, light some candles and stay inside for a cosy read. We have you covered with the best books to indulge in a Dark Academia Autumn!

What is Dark Academia?

Dark Academia is both a genre and an aesthetic, focusing on higher education, the arts, elite schools with imposing architecture and classical languages. In fashion, it adopts from the outfits worn in Ivy league schools, as well as the fashion of the 1940s. It is a melancholic genre, finding beauty in moody architecture and dark poetry.

Our picks

The Secret History, by Donna Tartt

Often credited as the book that sparked the birth of Dark Academia as a literary genre, this book focuses on a group of elite students, who explore new and sometimes darker ways of thinking, until it one day, changes their lives forever.

Don't be fooled by the number of pages, this book is a pageturner indeed, with compelling but dramatic characters, who think too much and feel too little.

Throughout the entire novel, a sense of doom creeps up on the reader, until the inevitable finally happens.

Buy this book: https://amzn.to/3ukY89A

If We Were Villains, by M.L.Rio

Often said to be the 'literary offspring' of The Secret History, If We Were Villains opens with Oliver having just served ten years in jail - for a murder he may or may not have committed. He tells his tale of a group of drama students at an elite arts college and the death of one of them when the natural order within the student group is is disturbed.

The book is filled with tragedy and betrayal, as unforgiving as the Shakesperian dramas it oozes with.

Perhaps more accessible than The Secret History, but equally dark.

Buy this book: https://amzn.to/3XPAgZl

Babel, by R.F. Kuang

Dark Academia is sometimes accused of romanticizing (white) entitlement and elitism, but if there's one book in the genre that addresses all of these topics, it's Babel.

We follow the inner struggle of a poor orphan, Robin, who is given the chance to study and enroll at the prestigious Royal Institute of Translation, or Babel.

But can you change these elite institutions from within? Are you willing to sacrifice your newly acquired status and entitlement to change the system for others?

An intelligent, well-crafted masterpiece!

Buy this book: https://amzn.to/3iwfH41

Ninth House, by Leigh Bardugo

While most readers will know Leigh Bardugo from her YA 'Grishaverse' , the Ninth House does not pull it punches.

This dark fantasy tale that does not shy away from violence, comes with a list of trigger warnings.

We follow Alex, a petty criminal school dropout, who is offered a second chance at one of the most prestigious universities. But why? And what do her mysterious benefactors want from her?

An adult read that grabs the reader by the throat.

Buy this book: https://amzn.to/3uCusoR

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

Not all Dark Academia books have to be recent ones. Many of the 'classics' such as Bram Stoker's Dracula or Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray find their way onto the Dark Academia shelves.

Our favorite however has to be May Shelley's Frankenstein. Not only is it one of the best known horror works of all times, but it is also a disturbing study of the human psyche.

Try to find the original 1818 text, oozing with hard-hitting political and social issues, brought by an intelligent and strong female voice.

Buy this book: https://amzn.to/3EX13uf