How a Dostoevsky novella took TikTok by storm
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The “solitary dreamer” in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s White Nights is resonating with Gen Z readers, like 27-year-old TikTok user Marcelo Nogueira.
PHOTO: AFP
- Dostoevsky's novella White Nights has become a TikTok sensation, boosting sales by 463% in Brazil and gaining popularity in Britain and Spain among Gen Z readers.
- The story resonates with young people feeling solitary and dreaming, with its themes of fleeting love and embracing reality striking a chord on social media.
- Social media is creating new audiences for classic literature, though experts warn that many online reviews are more advertising than true literary criticism.
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RIO DE JANEIRO - Marcelo Nogueira is not well versed in the classics but the 27-year-old Brazilian book influencer was seduced by Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky’s White Nights, a 19th-century tale of love and loneliness at the centre of an unlikely TikTok craze.
Dostoevsky’s story of a dreamer who, while strolling through the streets of St Petersburg, meets a young woman with whom he falls madly in love has become a bestseller in Brazil, nearly 180 years after its release.
Editora 34 publishing house told AFP news agency that its sales of the novella, one of Dostoevsky’s earliest works, had jumped 463 per cent year on year.
In Britain and Spain, it is also flying off the shelves.
Nogueira, who has 13,000 followers on TikTok, explained that Gen Z readers found an echo in “the figure of the solitary dreamer, which is how many young people feel today”.
Dostoevsky follows the narrator over four nights and a morning during which he ceases living in his imagination and embraces reality for the first time.
His peregrinations are the prelude to a love story as passionate as it is fleeting.
“My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man’s life?” the narrator exclaims in one of the lines most quoted on social media, reflecting on the enduring value of brief bursts of joy.
Bowled over
Tens of thousands of comments on BookTok, a popular book community on TikTok, attest to the popularity of one of Russia’s greatest novelists with the social media generation.
It “bowls you over: it’s real life written in a poetic way”, user @thayslaaaa commented.
Paloma Lima, a 29-year-old influencer and fan of Russian literature, told AFP that young TikTok users came to her YouTube channel after reading White Nights.
“It makes sense” because it’s a “short and intense” book and falls into one of the most popular tropes on TikTok, she said, citing popular narratives such as “friends becoming lovers”.
A pocket-sized edition of White Nights by Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
PHOTO: AFP
In Russia, the phenomenon is a source of both surprise and pride.
Speaking at the Moscow Book Fair, Ekaterina Kvitko, a 28-year-old author, said young Russian readers were far less enthused.
She said that this could be because the story is “about a protagonist who is alone, searching for some kind of love, some crutch to lean on”.
“Maybe teenagers in the West are living in that state right now,” she mused.
Criticism or advertising?
White Nights has emerged as a gateway book for Dostoevsky’s work, with some young readers progressing on to more challenging novels, such as Crime and Punishment.
It is an “unexpected” phenomenon, says Danilo Hora of Editora 34, reporting a 53 per cent increase in sales of Dostoevsky’s iconic tale of murder and guilt during the first seven months of the year.
In an era when short TikTok and YouTube videos are being blamed for eroding attention spans and fuelling a reading crisis, social media, it appears, is creating new audiences for classics.
“Being a reader is a very beautiful idea; it can even be marketed,” Nogueira said, adding that there is an “associated aesthetic that’s spreading” on TikTok.
Aesthetics are also driving demand for physical copies of the book over the digital version.
“It attracts more attention to have a wonderful cover than a Kindle,” said Nogueira.
For his video in which he discussed the book, he used an edition with a colourful pop-art cover of a couple kissing, which is sold out in several bookstores in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro.
Cecilia Rosas, a Brazilian researcher and translator of Russian literature, hailed the interest in classics on social media.
She stressed, however, the importance of distinguishing between literary criticism and reviews that pass for such on social media, but which, in her view, amount to “advertising”. AFP
