“Pov: you suppose you recognize love till you learn this ebook,” reads a viral TikTok post that’s referring to not a bestseller by Colleen Hoover or Sarah J. Maas, however as an alternative a 150-year-old Russian novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
This yr, the Penguin Classics version of Dostoevsky’s White Nights was the fourth-most offered work of literature in translation within the U.Okay., according to The Guardian. London-based bookshop Hatchards reported offered 190 copies within the final yr alone, with its normal supervisor describing the sudden reputation of the novella as nothing wanting a “phenomenon.”
The hashtag #Dostoevsky has over 34 million posts on TikTok, with searches for the ebook on the platform mentioning web page after web page of fervent opinions, annotated copies, and quotes superimposed over moody photographs. There at the moment are even White Nights-inspired Spotify playlists stuffed with songs by composers like Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, permitting readers to immerse themselves totally within the story’s melancholy.
Revealed in 1848, White Nights is ready in St. Petersburg, Russia in the course of the summer time, when the evenings are generally known as “white nights.” Narrated in first particular person by a anonymous younger man, the story follows his likelihood assembly with a girl eager for a lover who promised to return. Over a number of nights, they kind a connection, however whereas he falls in love, she stays steadfastly dedicated to her absent companion. The result’s a Nineteenth-century tackle “fundamental character syndrome,” with BookTok consuming up the novella’s themes of alienation, longing, and loneliness.
“When he says ‘ily’ however Dostoevsky mentioned ‘and if I’d already beloved you for twenty years, I nonetheless couldn’t have beloved you greater than I do proper now,’” reads one TikTok post. Given the ebook’s themes of loneliness and craving, it’s maybe unsurprising the 80-page White Nights has struck a chord with the social media technology. Younger folks aged 16 to 24 really feel extra lonely than some other age group, according to Forbes, and 73% of Gen Z report feeling alone generally or all the time.
Regardless of being born over 200 years in the past, Dostoevsky will get it. One TikToker wrote, “Me when a Russian man who lived within the Nineteenth century by some means completely describes a difficulty I’ve.”