"The Secret History" is the first novel by American writer Donna Tartt, published in September 1992.
"Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming." - Donna Tartt, The Secret History
The novel is based on an autobiographical experience. Southerner Donna Tartt entered the University of Mississippi in 1981, where she proved herself so well that she was advised to transfer to the prestigious Bennington College, where she graduated with a degree in "Classical Philology" in 1986. There she met the author of the famous "American Psychopath" Bret Easton Ellis, to whom "The Secret History" is dedicated in particular.
Donna Tartt began writing her first novel in 1984 as a sophomore. It is set not in its native American South, which will be the setting for Tartt's second novel, "Little Friend", but in New England, at Hampden College, which in many ways resembles Bennington. Based on the matrix of a university novel, it tells the story of a tightly knit group of six students studying Ancient Greek.
The "Secret History" novel has an analytical composition (which was first used by Sophocles in "Oedipus the King") - the book begins with a murder. Further narration is a retrospective of the events that led to it and its consequences. This is an inverted detective story told by one of six students, Richard Paypen, who, years later, reflects on the situation leading up to the murder of their friend Edmund "Bunny" Corcoran. According to Tartt, the desire to talk about the murder in the prologue was the first impetus for writing the novel. She was inspired by Hitchcock's suspense: the reader, of course, knows where this is going, but this makes observing characters who do not know even more stressful.
Initially, the novel was called "The God of Illusions" (in some languages it is still so), as the writer herself says in an interview. This name had a foundation because the novel explores exactly how university education and fictional texts influence personality formation. The name "Secret History" refers to the work of the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea (c. 500-562). Acting as a military chronicler at the court of Emperor Justinian, he wrote an eight-volume "History of Wars", which he provided with an "unofficial" addition - a pamphlet entitled "Anecdota". In it, he sets out the behind-the-scenes reasons for the political events described in the "History" and very critically assesses the actions of the emperor. The Greek title of the pamphlet was translated into English as "The Secret History",
You can purchase «The Secret History» at Amazon.
This article was sponsored by Cara Bombard.
Comments