Sharp academic satires, dark-academia obsessions and coming-of-age tales set among quads, lecture halls and common rooms, from mid-century classics to modern hits. Where do you stand?
1The Secret HistoryDonna Tartt's 1992 tale of classics students at a Vermont college bound by murder.
2PossessionA.S. Byatt's Booker-winning romance-mystery between two modern literary scholars.
3Lucky JimKingsley Amis's 1954 comic satire of provincial university life.
4StonerJohn Williams's quiet, devastating portrait of a Missouri English professor.
5PninVladimir Nabokov's tender comic novel about a Russian emigre professor.
6The Human StainPhilip Roth's novel of a classics professor disgraced at a New England college.
7DisgraceJ.M. Coetzee's Booker-winning story of a professor's fall in post-apartheid South Africa.
8Wonder BoysMichael Chabon's comic novel of a weekend with a struggling writer-professor.
9The Art of FieldingChad Harbach's baseball and friendship novel set at a Wisconsin college.
10The History ManMalcolm Bradbury's sharp satire of a radical sociology lecturer.
11Changing PlacesDavid Lodge's comic swap between two English and American professors.
12Small WorldDavid Lodge's academic romance following conference-circuit scholars.
13MooJane Smiley's satirical campus ensemble at a Midwestern agricultural university.
14Straight ManRichard Russo's comic novel of an English department chair in crisis.
15The IdiotElif Batuman's novel of a Turkish-American freshman at Harvard.
16Real LifeBrandon Taylor's Booker-shortlisted campus novel of a Black gay biochemistry student.
17Normal PeopleSally Rooney's tale of two Irish classmates at Trinity College Dublin.
18Brideshead RevisitedEvelyn Waugh's nostalgic novel opening in 1920s Oxford.
19Gaudy NightDorothy L. Sayers's Oxford women's college mystery starring Harriet Vane.
20Zuleika DobsonMax Beerbohm's Edwardian Oxford fantasy of a woman who drives students to suicide.
21The Groves of AcademeMary McCarthy's early satire of a professor fighting dismissal.
22The Marriage PlotJeffrey Eugenides's Brown University love triangle among literature students.
23BunnyMona Awad's dark, surreal satire of an MFA writing clique.
24Special Topics in Calamity PhysicsMarisha Pessl's literary mystery about a bookish teen and her elite prep school clique.
25Old SchoolTobias Wolff's novel of a boarding-school student writing contest.
