Darkest book you've ever read

[First of My Name]

What is/are the darkest book(s) you've ever read? (ASOIAF not included). By 'dark' I mean concerning heavy subjects, being hard to read, stuff like that. Of course 'dark' is mostly open to yor own interpretation.

Mine is probably Blade of Tyshalle, which also happens to my favorite book. I consider it dark for the following reasons (vague spoilers):

-Cannibalism and rape, committed at the same time by the same person.

-More cannibalism and rape. Including, for variety, several instances of rape of the mind, instead of the body.

-The main characters spends about 200 pages chained to a wall, sitting in his own shit and dying of an infected leg (Don't worry: he states at that point that this is the happiest he has ever been)

-Many murders and torture scenes, but that's fairly mundane these days of course

So, what book do you consider the darkest book you've ever read? This goes for both fictional and non-fictional works.

[Littlefingers In The Air]

Hard to get darker than Elie Wiesel's "Night".

[First of My Name]

Hard to get darker than Elie Wiesel's "Night".

That's dark on a whole other level, seeing as that isn't fictional :(. I've never read it, though.

[Littlefingers In The Air]

That's dark on a whole other level, seeing as that isn't fictional :(. I've never read it, though.

Did you want to limit this to fiction?

[First of My Name]

Did you want to limit this to fiction?

Not necessarily. The darkest books are bound to be non-fiction. Let's just divide this two categories.

What is the darkest work of fiction you've read?

[maarsen]

The Hunchback of Notre Dame. No redemption, nobody learns, and everybody dies. AAAArrrrgggg!!!

[Queen Ayras Lord Commander]

The best book I've ever read is also the darkest book I've ever read and its an autobiography of a child wrongfully detained in a gulag. I must strongly recommend "The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag" to anyone that cares about the dignity of third world citizens engulfed in brutal dictatorships. It's written by Kang Chol-Hwan, the first escapee from North Korea after the brutal Kim region became entrenched.

[Myshkin]

Let's see,

The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek

The Idiot by Feodor Dostoevsky

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Guerrillas by V.S. Naipaul

Hunger by Knut Hamsun

Forbidden Colors by Yukio Mishima

The Clown by Heinrich Boll

Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee

Embers by Sandor Marai

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

[Fez]

Off the top of my head, The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco. The main character is just so incredibly vile and arrogant, and its written in first person, so you're stuck in his head the entire time.

Its a really good book, just very dark, cynical, and depressing.

[Cold Hands warm heart]

Cancer Ward, by, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. The darkness of Russia

[Migey]

Well call me a bluff old traditionalist but I'm gonna have to go with Nineteen Eighty-Four.

I'm not sure this one qualifies as fully 'dark', to be honest, but one of the most unexpectedly 'impactful' books I've ever read, that hit me so hard at certain points that I had to put the book down and stop reading, was The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood.

Another, book which impacted my similarly (in an entirely different way though, and far less regularly), was The Cone Gatherers, by Robin Jenkins. Most of that comes from Duror, though.

I don't think I've read all that many really 'dark' books though...

[Vastet]

Spine of the World by R.A. Salvatore is the first thing that pops into my head.

[sj4iy]

Desolation by Stephen King, Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin.

Basically, apocalyptic stories are not really my cup of tea. They tend to scare the shit out of me more than any horror story could. Same with books about suffocation in small, cramped spaces (like The Cold Equations) or the devil incarnate (like Desolation).

[Darth Richard II]

Spine of the World by R.A. Salvatore is the first thing that pops into my head.

OK you gave it away. Now I KNOW you are a troll. Be more subtle!

[Tellus Explorer]

It :dunno: it wasn't that dark though

[Darth Richard II]

The Hammer by KJ Parker really messed with my head.

Also The Sparrow by Russell. Holy crap. I still think about that one.

I'd have to really think about it, generally I don't like things to get TOO dark, or it starts to border on torture porn, IMO.

Some of King's work is definitely fucked up. Desperation I remember being particularly grim, that's a good done.

[Ranger275]

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, for me. I'm sure there are others. Seven Years to Freedom by Nick Rowe was rough, knowing what happened to him years later.

[peterbound]

Spine of the World by R.A. Salvatore is the first thing that pops into my head.

You win the thread.

[peterbound]

The best book I've ever read is also the darkest book I've ever read and its an autobiography of a child wrongfully detained in a gulag. I must strongly recommend "The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag" to anyone that cares about the dignity of third world citizens engulfed in brutal dictatorships. It's written by Kang Chol-Hwan, the first escapee from North Korea after the brutal Kim region became entrenched.

And if you don't care?

[peterbound]

Let's see.

The Road was tough

Night was heart breaking.

I didn't see the Caineverse stuff as 'dark', just par for the course with him.

The first third of Lord Foul's Bane was a brutal read, especially at 14 years of age.

I just read a book called 'Fiend' that was kinda fucked up.

I may have a skewed opinion on what 'dark' means.

ETA: And let's not forget the comic book form of the Walking Dead. That shit is bleak as fuck. I almost gave up with carl was shot in the face, and only read the TPB now that glenn is dead. I can't handle the month to month shit after that.