Five books every student should read
What it's like to be a student, according to literature
Photo: 123rf
All my life, I have enjoyed reading novels about characters a few years older than me. I did it to get a grip on secondary school and university. Now, as I head towards working life, I'm reading novels to try to understand what it is like.
Most of those novels gave me a somewhat distorted picture of reality, with more love triangles, conspiracies and drugs than I have encountered so far. Even so, I believe students should read novels about students, as they are often about detachment, the freedom to reinvent yourself, intellectual overconfidence, and, obviously, love. I think there are at least five novels about student life that every student should read. According to these novels, students are...
Excessive
In these books, students are often excessive. Some drink too much, others study obsessively, and yet others do both. These books also convey the image that going to university offers you the perfect opportunity to reinvent yourself, which turns out to be more difficult than the characters imagine. The characters often fall into the roles others expect of them more quickly than they hoped. The desire to “belong somewhere” and “find their tribe” often leads them to adapt to prevailing norms.
Another thing I love about these books is that they show how class differences influence students' lives. Richard, from The Hidden History, must pretend he comes from a more privileged background, while Connell, from Normal People, doesn't relate to the posh students at Trinity College at all. Marie, from The Laws, is also keenly aware of the differences between provincials like her and the children of village notables, who are in the majority at her university. So, one thing these books make perfectly clear: the poor guy is always the one who has to change to fit in, not the other way around.
Not created equal
Speaking of class differences, university seems easier for those whose student debt is easily manageable. After all, they can rely on their parents' money. Expensive rooms? No problem. Graduating later than usual? No biggie, either. Their diploma offers poor job prospects? Well, that matters a lot less to them.
Money, however, does not solve all problems, as evidenced by Niemand in de stad (a Dutch novel yet to be translated into English). Though the Dutch relationship with class differs from that of the Anglo-Saxons, privileged Dutch students can also have disdain for provincials, migrants, and students who say koelkast instead of ijskast (they both mean "fridge", but they consider the latter cooler than the former, Ed.).
Never average, but never perfect either
These five famous books are all about extraordinary students. They seem to have no place for the "average Joe” living in a shared house, let alone the ones still living with their parents, who bravely face the rush hour every morning just to get to campus. Neither do we read about the student who has to work two days a week to save money and pay their tuition fees, let alone the student who doesn't make many friends at university but rather sticks to the social circle in their hometown.
However, one of the strengths of novels inspired by student life is that the characters are usually imperfect. The characters in these books often choose the worst possible course of action, such as not communicating, running away or committing criminal offences. Many students can relate to this, as their prefrontal cortex is still immature.
Fearful of "real life"
In these five novels, students also express a certain aversion to the life that awaits them after graduation, which they consider the onset of mediocrity: an office job, a stable relationship, a mortgage. The main characters tremble at this prospect, which leads them to take dramatic actions that often go beyond starting a second master's degree in Creative Writing or backpacking through Southeast Asia for three months.
This seems to stem from a certain urge for exceptionality – something that does not only occur in fiction, as evidenced by Simon van Teutem's non-fiction book De Bermudadriehoek van talent (The Bermuda Triangle of Talent, Ed.), about students who go to great lengths to get a job at the likes of Morgan Stanley and the Boston Consulting Group, and Job van Ballegoijen de Jong's Morgen vertel ik alles (Tomorrow I'll Tell You Everything, Ed.) a first-person account from someone who lied to his parents about having graduated.
In one way or another, these books create expectations about what university will be like. I know many people who hoped to meet a man with a silver chain like Connell, end up in a vague intellectual cult, or drink to excess in fraternities. I know many people who treat their time at university as a great personal quest or who cross their fingers to at least find something great, compelling, and life-changing at university. Perhaps they would do well to read these books about what these hopes can bring.
The five titles below are based on a non-representative survey I conducted, talking to students at parties and gatherings. It's also based on my own personal favourites, of course. Some books are a bit older, but as far as I'm concerned, they are still relatable. If you're an environmentally-conscious gift giver, the older novels will be easy to find in second-hand bookstores. And, for the non-readers out there, some of these titles have been adapted into films or TV series.
The Secret History (1993) - Donna Tartt
"The snow in the mountains was melting, and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation". In the first chapter of Donna Tartt's classic novel The Secret History, we learn that Richard and four friends have just pushed their “friend” Bunny into a ravine. As the story progresses, we learn what drove the group of students to do this. The answer lies somewhere between intellectual arrogance, a cultured professor and too many drugs.
Tartt is vicious and hilarious in her descriptions of the students on campus; reportedly, two fellow students served as inspiration. Many people are familiar with that type of person, wearing tweed jackets and carrying Plato, Dante or something of the sort in their arms. Will the friends get away with the murder?
With this novel, Tartt not only started a stellar career but also a whole genre: dark academia. Though the genre is not easy to define, the glorification of an old university atmosphere, including inkwells, elitism, small-scale education, glasses, and a search for “something higher” takes centre stage, as does murder.
If that tickles your fancy, I also recommend reading Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, and Bunny, by Mona Awad.
Niemand in de Stad (2012) - Philip Huff
This is one is for the Dutch-speaking readers out there, as it hasn't been translated into English yet.
Will people still be interested in a book about fraternities in 2025? Well, this one certainly deserves an audience because Huff writes really well, and the book tackles serious issues. In Niemand in de Stad (Nobody in the City), the main character, Philip, joins a fraternity in Amsterdam, where he befriends Matt, a student with daddy issues, and Jacob, a piano-playing intellectual.
The story covers what many would call toxic masculinity, with constant cheating and unsafe sex. Yet the book is a delightful ode to male friendship and going wild (they even cry together!), at a time when men are mainly pumping iron, trading crypto and working on self-optimisation.
Niemand in de Stad is also about losing yourself, lying, blurring norms and the price you pay for all that. The ending moves me and reminds me that for many people, their student days are also their first confrontation with personal suffering.
Fancy more university antics, but with a condom this time? Read Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe, and Uf by Jojanneke van den Berge, whose story is set right here, in Utrecht.
Normal People (2018) - Sally Rooney
When I started asking students what their favourite novels with students as characters were, people invariably mentioned Sally Rooney's Normal People. The story follows the rich and troubled Marianne and the poor and troubled Connell, who go to high school together in rural Ireland. There, Connell is the cool, popular kid, while Marianne is not. They have a secret affair. Both end up going to Trinity College in Dublin, where the tables are turned: Marianne flourishes in the intellectual circles of students from wealthy backgrounds, while Connell does not.
Over the years, Marianne and Connell get entangled in a complicated on-again, off-again relationship marked by miscommunication, denial and class differences, but they never lose sight of each other. The idea of a relationship that refuses to blossom because one of the two people in it cannot or will not fully commit is all too familiar to many students, especially at a time when relationships are out and emotional unavailability is in. At the same time, the book is filled with tender moments, and you can't help but hope that the two will eventually find each other again.
Fancy more loneliness, alienation and miscommunication? Then read Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami.
The Laws (1991) - Connie Palmen
In the Dutch novel The Laws, philosophy student Marie Deniet allows herself to be mansplained by an astrologer, an epileptic, a philosopher, a priest, an ethicist, an astronomer, and a psychiatrist. That sounds like a nightmare, but reading the novel is a great pleasure because Marie is a star storyteller. She occasionally acknowledges that the men don't ask too many questions and are sometimes downright narcissistic, yet she tolerates them because she is engaged in an extreme, perhaps even ultimate, search for herself.
Although quite serious in nature and full of academic references, this quest takes place largely outside the university. I suspect that the world is not full of Maries, but she symbolises a large group of students for whom education is a torment and the university is not central. Under the adage of student self-activity, most of the lectures were renamed “work lectures”, which meant that you had to defend thoughts you didn't have to other students who didn't have any, either. This description of seminars is painfully accurate for many students, with the exception of a few “megalomaniac twenty-year-olds” here and there.
If you fancy another brilliant storyteller, read Mating by Norman Rush.
Katabasis (2025) - R.F. Kuang
This was the student book of 2025. Broese, the bookshop in the city centre, filled its window display with no fewer than five editions of this book. Both the people in front of and behind me in the queue also bought it. Half of my (admittedly not very large) classmates read it, and my boyfriend and I barely spoke to each other for two days because we were so engrossed in the book.
Its popularity might be surprising considering the plot: PhD students Alice and Peter descend into hell, à la Dante, to bring back a deceased professor. Only then can they graduate and get a nice letter of recommendation. Meanwhile, they must grapple with the tensions between them, both academic and romantic, and solve the Monty Hall problem (the one with the three doors). Katabasis raises so many questions: Why do students overburden themselves, and what are the consequences? Why do they cross the line?
Fancy more hellish study woes? I would recommend Ninth House, by Leigh Bardugo.
We zijn benieuwd welke boeken onze lezers missen in dit rijtje. Is een andere roman over studenten volgens jou een mustread? Laat het weten in de comments.
Wat een leuk artikel, en ik heb een paar van de boeken op mijn lijstje gezet. Dankjewel