The Dark Academicals

Our second episode of this season takes us to London, Karachi and New Dehli in Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi’s debut novel, ‘The Centre’. This one leapt onto our radar as soon as that incredibly arresting cover was unveiled and we found out it was about a prestigious translation centre - it had to be a podcast book! Welcome to The Centre. The cost may be high, but you'll never be the same . . . Anisa Ell...

Season 9 of ‘The Dark Academicals’ is HERE - we’re back! - and we’re starting off with a huge debut that is being marketed as dark academia Black vampires and honestly, say less. Hidden in our world, a society of vampires originating in Africa, can only feed from select human bloodlines. Each bloodline represents a House more cutthroat than the next. To ensure peaceful co-existence and inherit the...

It’s finally happening! We’re going back to the beginning and re-examining ‘The Secret History’ with 8 seasons of the podcast behind us and this season of reading Tartt’s influences - how has our list of tropes held up? Do we still love the novel whole-heartedly? 'Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on th...

Donna Tartt herself cited Patricia Highsmith’s ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’ as a book that was important to her when writing ‘The Secret HIstory’, and as that idea is the basis for this season, we had to give this one a whirl! There’s also been a recent Netflix mini-series adaptation so it’s a story that’s had a recent resurgence - it felt like time. Tom Ripley is struggling to stay one step ahead of...

'Frankenstein' is a literary staple. Everyone has heard of it, and most discerning reader will have either read it or have it on their TBR. Groundbreaking, pivotal and genre making... But how much of an influence does it have on modern dark academia?

‘Stoner’ is a classic campus novel that has been on my (Sophie’s TBR) for years and years - it’s one of those novels that is almost universally loved. It’s going to be very interesting to see the comparisons between seminal campus novels from opposite sides of the Atlantic. We’ve featured Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Brideshead Revisited’ , and now it’s the turn of ‘Stoner’.

Ancient literature? Yeah, we’re going there! ‘Bacchae’ is the play, the source material, the inspiration, for the adventures and dangers that Henry and Co get in to during ‘The Secret History’. It’s a foundational text for this novel and lays the groundwork for the conflict and the goal of the book, and shapes and sets the tone for the academic tones and goals in dark academia. Bacchae, a profound...

Welcome to season 8 of The Dark Academicals! We’re kicking off with ‘Black Chalk’ by Christopher J Yates, a psychological thriller campus novel from 2013, that features on nearly every dark academia reading list out there. It’s much more similar to the earlier dark academia than our explorations of modern dark academia so we were eager to really give it a go. One game. Six students. Five survivors...

In this extra special episode of The Dark Academicals, we have Katy Hays, author of 'The Cloisters' discussing fate, destiny, dark academia and more. The conversation flows from Dark Academia tropes, to the pivotal action in 'The Cloisters', as well as finding both Sophie and I shooketh at Katy's writing process. and excitement regarding future projects.

Can you believe it’s already the season seven finale of ‘The Dark Academicals’? We can’t! For this final episode we’ve got a dark academia thriller set between the 1990s and current day that we think is going to be a surefire hit, and possibly pose some real connections to ‘The Secret History’.

It’s Sarah’s first time reading S.T. Gibson, while Sophie has already read ‘A Dowry of Blood’ and so there are already some expectations and intrigue going into ‘An Education in Malice’. We had a lot of fun talking about this book, and we hope you enjoy listening along!

It’s time for our dark academia adjacent title for season seven and we’re tackling Curtis Sittenfeld’s classic campus novel, ‘Prep’. Sophie read this about a decade ago and has had a lingering love for it ever since, so it has some big shoes to fill on this reread and for Sarah’s first read. 'Prep’ is a modern classic generally in fiction, but also in the realm of campus novels. We can’t wait to s...

Welcome to The Dark Academicals, the podcast where we delve into the mythos of dark academia one book at a time. Especially when that one book has a cover like this one... Whoever said you can't judge a book by its cover was wrong. But then again, as we dig down into 'Belladonna' we start to discover that maybe it's not everything we were promised it would be? There were definitely some polarising...

Welcome to The Dark Academicals, the podcast where we delve into the mythos of dark academia one book at a time. Have you ever come across lunar magic before? We haven’t! With this beautiful cover and the promise of dark academia meeting lunar magic, ‘Curious Tides’ had to have a starring role in season seven. This was one of our most anticipated reads of the end of 2023 so we’re incredibly excite...

Welcome to the SEVENTH season of The Dark Academicals! We kick off with a big one. The TikTok favourite 'A Deadly Education'. It has received a lot of hype, and is a copmmon feature on Dark Academia lists... But can it live up to that reputation? And is it, actually, Dark Academia? In this episode we discuss: - Representation of POC characters - Diversity - Scene setting and sense of place Plus mu...

There is one TV show that we have discussed, referenced and alluded to throughout the history of The Dark Academicals. It’s ‘Gilmore Girls’. Obviously. It’s synonymous with the dark academia seasons, she’s everyone’s favourite bookworm, and everybody has opinions about this show. We couldn’t get any further in The Dark Academicals without dedicating a full, available-to-all episode to one of our f...

We’ve reached the finale of season 6! Already! There seems to be a curse within ‘The Dark Academicals’ for the finale books, but we’re confident that we’ve broken the cycle with Ava Reid’s ‘A Study in Drowning’. Can it possibly live up to our sky-high dark academia expectations and turn around our tradition of ending the season on a disappointing book? Let’s find out! In this episode we discuss: -...

‘Summer Sons’ by Lee Mandelo is taking us to Vanderbilt and we are so excited about this one! This sounds like everything that we love in a novel and we’re really looking forward to seeing how it measures up against our examinations. A queer Southern Gothic with ‘academic intrigue’?Bring. It. On. In this episode we discuss: - When the Southern Gothic meets just…the Southern - The atmosphere and th...

Happy Halloween! To add a little haunting into your day, we’ve got a brand new episode for you! ‘She is a Haunting’ by Trang Thanh Tran has been on our list for a long time and it couldn’t be a more perfect season to feature it on the podcast. We’ve got a haunted house, a Gothic mystery, a ghost and questions about belonging - but does it tick any of our dark academia boxes?

Our dark academia adjacent book for Season 6 is a classic horror novel from the Queen of the Southern Gothic, Ms Shirley Jackson, and one of Sophie’s favourite authors. It’s officially spooky season so we’re looking at ‘The Haunting of Hill House’. How does the Gothic and horror play into dark academia? In this episode we discuss: - The way that Shirley Jackson pokes fun at horror, while also writ...

This week’s episode features a book like nothing we’ve featured before: a spicy TikTok dark romance that the BookTok girlies are shouting from the rooftops and calling dark academia at every chance they get. "If this is madness," she whispered almost against his lips, "drown me in it." Corvina Clemm is a woman with secrets. The last thing she expects to receive is an admission letter from the Univ...

We’re back for season six (!) of ‘The Dark Academicals’ and we’ve got a line-up full of spooks and scares for the best reading season of the year. Our first pick takes us to a New York magic school and an obsession with a childhood fantasy book series in ‘The Magicians’ by Lev Grossman. Does this portal fantasy have what it takes to also take the title of dark academia? In this episode we discuss:...

It’s time for the finale of season five already and we can’t believe it! What a season we’ve had. We’re closing out the season with ‘How We Fall Apart’ by Katie Zhao which has been on our radars for a good few years because of the prep school setting and promise of deep, dark secrets. Crazy Rich Asians meets One of Us is Lying in this electrifying YA thriller where students at an elite prep school...

‘The Cloisters’ was one of our most anticipated debuts of 2022 but we’ve been saving it to feature on the pod and we are both SO excited to finally be getting to it. With comparisons to ‘The Secret History’ and a setting of The Met in NYC, mentions of the Gothic and tarot, it was a no-brainer. but will it prove to be dark academia?

It’s time for our dark academia adjacent title for season 5! We’re heading back to the world of modern classics to discuss a title that is often cited as a pre-cursor to the campus novel, itself laying the groundwork for dark academia. We’re reading Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Brideshead Revisited’. There’s always something special about finally reading a classic that’s been on your TBR for literal years, and...