‘You think you know love until you read this book’: Why TikTok is obsessed with this 1848 Russian novella

“Pov: you think you know love until you read this book,” reads a viral TikTok post that’s referring not to a bestseller by Colleen Hoover or Sarah J. Maas, but instead a 150-year-old Russian novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky. 

This year, the Penguin Classics edition of Dostoevsky’s White Nights was the fourth-most sold work of literature in translation in the U.K., according to The Guardian. London-based bookshop Hatchards reported sold 190 copies in the last year alone, with its general manager describing the sudden popularity of the novella as nothing short of a “phenomenon.”

The hashtag #Dostoevsky has over 34 million posts on TikTok, with searches for the book on the platform bringing up page after page of fervent reviews, annotated copies, and quotes superimposed over moody shots. There are now even White Nights-inspired Spotify playlists full of songs by composers like Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, allowing readers to immerse themselves fully in the story’s melancholy.

Published in 1848, White Nights is set in St. Petersburg, Russia during the summer, when the evenings are known as “white nights.” Narrated in first person by a nameless young man, the story follows his chance meeting with a woman longing for a lover who promised to return. Over several nights, they form a connection, but while he falls in love, she remains steadfastly devoted to her absent partner. The result is a 19th-century take on “main character syndrome,” with BookTok eating up the novella’s themes of alienation, longing, and loneliness. 

“When he says ‘ily’ but Dostoevsky said ‘and if I’d already loved you for twenty years, I still couldn’t have loved you more than I do right now,'” reads one TikTok post. Given the book’s themes of loneliness and yearning, it’s perhaps unsurprising the 80-page White Nights has struck a chord with the social media generation. Young people aged 16 to 24 feel more lonely than any other age group, according to Forbes, and 73% of Gen Z report feeling alone sometimes or always.

Despite being born over 200 years ago, Dostoevsky gets it. One TikToker wrote, “Me when a Russian man who lived in the 19th century somehow perfectly describes an issue I have.”

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