I had no idea that dark academia novels were a thing but years ago I seem to have written one. Here’s what Tom Nolan at the #WSJ thought about it:
“Peter Abrahams, in his terrific 10th novel, “Crying Wolf,” tells a riveting story of a time as menacing as any: the present. Inverness, though, the small New England school where an out-of-state scholarship freshman named Nat tries to make his mark, seems idyllic: a frequent location site for filmmakers in need of an ideal college campus. The idyll grows stranger when Nat is befriended by Izzie and Grace, beautiful twins in whose wealthy milieu Nat is a fish out of water. The twins hatch a scheme to solve Nat’s money problems, an ill-conceived caper that turns ugly when it converges with the deluded plans of a drug-addled campus thief. “Crying Wolf” unfolds brilliantly, in sequences made all the more compelling by nuance and precise detail. Mr. Abrahams captures all sorts of voices in all kinds of rooms: the razor-edged banter at the twins’ family dinner table, the heady talk in the philosophy class of a Nietzsche-obsessed professor, the egoistic mental ramblings of a thief who recites infomercial babble like spiritual truth. A book as smart and gripping as “Crying Wolf” makes any year memorable.”)
And since on Sundays we do beginnings here’s how it starts:
One should not avoid one’s tests, although they are perhaps the most dangerous game one could play and are in the end tests which are taken before ourselves and before no other judge. (Beyond Good and Evil, Section 41)
– Introduction to the syllabus, Philosophy 322 (Superman and Man: Nietzsche and Cobain), Prof. Uzig.