Now trending: Classic existentialism, served with a lofi background.
The Surge of the Great Three – Kafka, Dostoevsky, Camus
In the performative world of modern social media, Books by classic authors are making a surprising return to the spotlight. On platforms like #BookTok and its fancier cousin, #Bookstagram, readers once spotlighted contemporary bestsellers by Colleen Hoover and Taylor Jenkins Reid (though they’re still around). Now, there’s a growing fascination with the Existentialist Uncles: Camus, Kafka, and Dostoevsky. Their works,The Stranger, Metamorphosis, White Nights, have become unlikely favorites among a new generation of digital readers. Somehow, in a space driven by trends and aesthetics, the haunting questions posed by these authors about identity, isolation, and meaning are striking a deep chord.
What’s the Catch?
So how did the Colleen Hoover crowd, the readers behind the bestselling author in the U.S. for 2022 and 2023, get lured into the world of existential dread and anti-capitalist despair? What’s the catch?
Some highbrow critics might dismiss it as pseudo-reading, a surface-level aestheticization of deep literature. And while there may be some truth to that, it would be presumptuous, and frankly unfair, to lump an entire wave of curiosity and engagement under that label. The BookTok scene, driven by community, hot takes, and the dopamine rush of finishing a book, values completion almost as much as contemplation. And short, intense novellas like The Stranger or White Nights offer the perfect entry point.
Of course, young readers have always seen themselves in messy, lovelorn protagonists with doomed souls. So it shouldn’t really be surprising that the raw, aching voices of writers like Kafka (“You are the knife I turn inside myself” from Letters to Milena) are striking a nerve with an equally anxious, equally yearning Gen Z. These authors had main character syndrome before it had a name and so does this generation.
Whether it’s a clip of Lana Del Rey playing over a quote about the absurd, or a passionate deep dive ignored by the algorithm, BookTok has done its job. It has made these long-dead existentialists go viral, something they never could have imagined, and maybe wouldn’t have approved of. But here we are.
Would Kafka Be Published Today?
This sudden revival of classic literature also raises a more sobering question: are we offering the same patience, grace, and room to grow to contemporary authors?
In today’s publishing industry, if a writer doesn’t land a New York Times bestseller by their second book, their chances often dry up. Publishers want instant virality, immediate returns, and a clear “hook.” The space for slow-burn brilliance, or unconventional storytelling is shrinking. The alternative? Churning out content on a schedule, books written to meet market demand rather than creative instinct.
So it’s worth asking: would someone like Kafka even get published today? A writer who barely published during his lifetime? Whose books were dense, disorienting, and deeply interior? It’s hard to imagine a publishing exec giving that pitch the green light.
The Algorithm Can’t Kill the Canon
All said and done, the classic revival reminds us of one essential truth: the algorithm can’t kill the canon. Trends may come and go, books may go viral for a week and vanish the next, but real art, good, enduring art, has a way of sticking around. We might be living in the age of swipes and situationships, but we still savour the slow burn of Pride and Prejudice.
The only thing left for us to do is to make sure more classic books get the chance to exist for this generation and the next. Let’s make room for the weird, the wordy, the wonderful. Stories worth reading, and rereading, even when the algorithm moves on.
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