The Secret History

25 Women to Read Before You Die

The writers your life won't be complete without.

There's no living writer like Donna Tartt. Not since reading the Greek and Russian greats in college have I encountered a writer so gifted in weaving the melodramatic, even the supernatural, into the everyday; nor have I read prose so finely calibrated and opulent that the story's atmosphere quickly supplants my own. All of Tartt's novels — each a decade in the making — involve eccentric characters who find themselves in increasingly outlandish, dangerous situations. Her excellent debut novel, the literary thriller The Secret History, follows a cult-like group of classics students at a prestigious college who begin committing murders, possibly under the direction of Dionysus, Greek god of ritual madness. A spellbinding and darkly humorous drama of privilege and desire, The Secret History is the type of book you read through the night and think about long after you've finished. Recommended By Rhianna W., Powells.com

The Secret History by Donna Tartt was the beginning of my obsession with school stories. It is so creepy and odd, and so much like a train wreck from which I couldn't look away. To immerse myself in this book was like living in rarified air, so rich, so deep with history, so exclusive, so unlike my own life. I couldn't get enough. So many, many, many school stories later, this one is still the best.  Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com

Truly deserving of the accolade a modern classic, Donna Tartt's novel is a remarkable achievement — both compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful.

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 their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.

"Enthralling....A remarkably powerful novel [and] a ferociously well-paced entertainment....Forceful, cerebral, and impeccably controlled." The New York Times Book Review

"[A] wonderfully beguiling book, a journey backward to the fierce and heady friendships of our school days, when all of us believed in our power to conjure up divinity and to be forgiven any sin." The Philadelphia Inquirer

"A huge, mesmerizing, galloping read, pleasurably devoured.....Gorgeously written, relentlessly erudite." Vanity Fair

"A smart, craftsman-like, viscerally compelling novel." Time

"The Secret History implicates the reader in a conspiracy which begins in bucolic enchantment and ends exactly where it must....Donna Tartt has written a mesmerizing and powerful novel." Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City

"Donna Tartt has a real shot at becoming her generation's Edgar Allan Poe....The Secret History pulses like a telltale heart on steroids." Glamour

"[W]ell-written....The book's many allusions, both literary and classical...fail to provide the deeper resonance of such works as Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Ultimately, it works best as a psychological thriller." Library Journal

"Beautifully written, suspenseful from start to finish." Vogue

"One of the best American college novels to come along since John Knowles's A Seperate Peace....Immensely entertaining." Houston Chronicle

"Entertaining, evocative first novel." Publishers Weekly

"[A]n elaborately conceived and artistically ambitious thriller....Tartt offers the aroma of decadence, not its anatomy; stylish intimations of misbehavior, not visions of hell." The New Republic

"Donna Tartt is clearly a gifted writer....She has the ability to leave her literary contemporaries standing in the road." The Miami Herald

"A great, dense, disturbing story, wonderfully told." Cosmopolitan

"An accomplished psychological thriller....Absolutely chilling....Tartt has a stunning command of the lyrical." The Village Voice

"A thinking-person's thriller....As stony and chilling as any Greek tragedian ever plumbed." New York Newsday

Donna Tartt is a novelist, essayist, and critic. The Secret History has been translated into twenty-four languages.