Girl Dinner

Dark Academia is a subgenre within the worlds of both literary and popular fiction that re-imagines the campus novel from new, darker perspectives. Traditionally, the campus novel is a modern bildungsroman that centers on questions of identity, personal development, and growth. Its protagonists navigate complex choices as they enter adulthood and re-conceptualize themselves against the backdrop of their changing lives. 

Dark academia novels explore the campus experience through a darker, sometimes even sinister lens. Often set at boarding schools or elite institutions of higher learning, dark academia narratives feature themes related to obsession, moral ambiguity, ambition, intellectual development, psychological manipulation, secrets, and lies. They employ Gothic tropes and are often moodily atmospheric. Haunted spaces, storms, austere stone architecture, and supernatural elements abound. Some of the novel’s action might take place at night or involve rule-breaking and illicit or forbidden activities. Unlike in the traditional campus novel, characters in dark academia narratives are often of dubious moral character and prioritize ambition over personal ethics. While protagonists might still be wrestling with questions of identity and purpose, they do so within the framework of a much more fraught set of experiences.

Although dark academia novels have exploded in popularity during recent years, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992) is often cited as one of the genre’s first exemplars. It follows six classics majors at an elite private college in Vermont as they engage in a series of increasingly questionable choices that culminate in murder. The students, all interested in Greece and Rome, fall under the spell of a charismatic instructor and justify murder in part because they come to see death and even killing through an abstract lens, as part of a set of rites and rituals important to the ancients. It shares with Girl Dinner an interest in the ethics of elitism and an interrogation of tradition. Like Tartt’s protagonists, the girls in the House, as well as its alumnae, become apologists for murder because of its ritualistic “value” and the way that it can further their self-interests.

Mona Awad’s Bunny (2019) is a more recent example. Set in an elite creative writing program, it follows a student protagonist as she is drawn into a cultish clique of “mean girls” who engage in violent rituals in which they turn rabbits into human-like beasts. Bunny shares with both The Secret History and Girl Dinner an interest in the complex psychology of tightly knit social groups and uses death, violence, and murder symbolically to explore the cult-like atmosphere that elite institutions create. In these novels, violence represents the perils and pitfalls of extreme privilege. Girls such as those that the protagonist in Bunny encounters and the House’s beautiful, polished members happily take liberties with traditional ethics in order to achieve their goals, justifying their actions in part because of entitlement.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Bewitching (2025) also blends realism with the supernatural. Set at a small, elite college, it follows a working-class protagonist as she navigates life at an institution where affluence is the norm. The Bewitching shares with many dark academia novels an interest in ethics and moral ambiguity. Its protagonist does wrestle with the kinds of identity development issues that typify campus novels, but she does so against the backdrop of an eerie series of paranormal events, a tableaux of long-buried secrets, and a slowly unraveling mystery. Like The Secret History, Girl Dinner, and Bunny, it also features ritualistic killing. Murder does become part of The Bewitching’s interrogation of power and privilege, but in The Bewitching violence is used as a metaphor for class warfare in a broader, societal sense rather just as an indictment of campus politics specifically.

Layne Fargo’s They Never Learn (2020) represents dark academia in popular fiction. Also set at a university, its protagonist is a female professor who assumes the role of clandestine vigilante killer to mete out justice to men on campus who evade punishment for serial mistreatment of women. In dialogue with the #MeToo movement, They Never Learn functions in part as a revenge fantasy and explores the (albeit dubious) ethics of taking the law into one’s own hands. The murky ethics of vigilantism and revenge work their way into numerous dark academia titles. The murders in Girl Dinner are also part of the genre’s broader exploration of the politics of revenge, as all of Caroline’s victims are men who prey on women without meaningful repercussions.

R.F. Kuang’s Katabasis (2025) is another example from the world of popular fiction that blends fantasy with reality. It follows two protagonists, competing magic students, as they journey into the underworld to save the soul of their professor. It explores the impact of ambition and pride by drawing humorous comparisons between hell and academia. R.F Kuang is known for popular fiction that critiques society and its structures, and as a PhD candidate at Yale, she has inside knowledge of being a student at one of the United States’ most elite, privileged institutions.