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Cover of The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Secret History

Donna Tartt

  • 608 pages · about 10 hours
  • First published 1992
  • 52 editions
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1 About this book

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last - inexorably - into evil.

  • Teacher-student relationships
  • Murder
  • Murderers
  • Mystery
  • Psychological fiction
  • Mystery Thriller
  • College students
  • College teachers

2 What to expect

A campus novel told as a murder story in reverse: the narrator admits at the start that he and his friends murdered one of their own group, then explains how it came to that. The friends are a small, privileged circle of classics students at a Vermont college, and the book is about beauty, elitism, guilt and the wish to belong. It is long, slow-burning and atmospheric, with more psychology than detection.

Good for readers who want: dark academia, a literary thriller, and a slow-burning read.

3 About Donna Tartt

Born 1963

Donna Louise Tartt (born December 23, 1963) is an American novelist. She wrote the novels The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002), and The Goldfinch (2013), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was adapted into a 2019 film of the same name. She was included in Time magazine's 2014 "100 Most Influential People" list.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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