This week’s episode of ‘The Dark Academicals’ took us to an exclusive private school with an anonymous texter attempting to bring down the school’s only two black students with escalating methods of cruelty in Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s dark academia social thriller, ‘Ace of Spades’.

It’s a heck of a book, and we had some big topics to discuss.

In this episode our discussion included:

• Whether the novel fits into our framework of dark academia

• Institutional racism in society and it’s role in the plot

• Homophobia and Devon’s experience as a gay black teenager

If you fancy getting your hands on ‘Ace of Spades’ you can buy it from bookshop.org which both supports us as affliates, but also supports local bookshops!

(Full bibilography and show notes made available through Patreon)

• ‘Ace of Spades’ by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

• ‘Madam’ by Phoebe Wynne

• ‘The Great Gatsby’ by F Scott Fitzgerald

• ‘Catherine House’ by Elisabeth Thomas’