15 books
—
1 voter
Existential Dread Books
Showing 1-50 of 557
No Longer Human (Paperback)
by (shelved 15 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.93 — 280,286 ratings — published 1948
The Stranger (Paperback)
by (shelved 14 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.03 — 1,494,305 ratings — published 1942
Notes from Underground (Paperback)
by (shelved 13 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.16 — 252,233 ratings — published 1864
The Metamorphosis (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 13 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.91 — 1,521,477 ratings — published 1915
A Short Stay in Hell (Paperback)
by (shelved 11 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.13 — 99,058 ratings — published 2011
The Bell Jar (Paperback)
by (shelved 10 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.04 — 1,292,137 ratings — published 1963
I Who Have Never Known Men (Paperback)
by (shelved 10 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.05 — 649,318 ratings — published 1995
Nausea (Hardcover)
by (shelved 10 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.93 — 145,351 ratings — published 1938
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (Paperback)
by (shelved 8 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.21 — 66,618 ratings — published 1942
The Myth of Sisyphus (Paperback)
by (shelved 7 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.16 — 105,220 ratings — published 1942
Norwegian Wood (Paperback)
by (shelved 7 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.98 — 761,512 ratings — published 1987
Girl, Interrupted (Paperback)
by (shelved 6 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.95 — 289,860 ratings — published 1993
Severance (Hardcover)
by (shelved 6 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.87 — 138,499 ratings — published 2018
The Secret History (Paperback)
by (shelved 6 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.15 — 1,101,870 ratings — published 1992
Tender Is the Flesh (Paperback)
by (shelved 6 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.77 — 457,779 ratings — published 2017
My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Paperback)
by (shelved 6 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.59 — 607,127 ratings — published 2018
The Trial (Paperback)
by (shelved 5 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.93 — 415,576 ratings — published 1925
Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead (Paperback)
by (shelved 5 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.83 — 98,436 ratings — published 2021
Crime and Punishment (Paperback)
by (shelved 5 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.29 — 1,138,572 ratings — published 1866
1984 (Paperback)
by (shelved 5 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.20 — 5,693,668 ratings — published 1949
The Road (Hardcover)
by (shelved 5 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.00 — 1,076,841 ratings — published 2006
The Catcher in the Rye (Paperback)
by (shelved 5 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.80 — 3,984,740 ratings — published 1951
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (Audible Audio)
by (shelved 4 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.93 — 174,061 ratings — published 2009
The Days of Abandonment (Paperback)
by (shelved 4 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.86 — 62,633 ratings — published 2002
White Nights (Paperback)
by (shelved 4 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.06 — 421,901 ratings — published 1848
The Book of Disquiet (Paperback)
by (shelved 4 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.39 — 39,541 ratings — published 1982
Never Let Me Go (Paperback)
by (shelved 4 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.85 — 900,269 ratings — published 2005
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Hardcover)
by (shelved 4 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.99 — 436,069 ratings — published 2019
The Idiot (Hardcover)
by (shelved 4 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.63 — 113,088 ratings — published 2017
The Plague (Paperback)
by (shelved 4 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.02 — 328,130 ratings — published 1947
Piranesi (Hardcover)
by (shelved 3 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.20 — 548,647 ratings — published 2020
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream (Mass Market Paperback)
by (shelved 3 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.88 — 61,309 ratings — published 1967
The Midnight Library (The Midnight World, #1)
by (shelved 3 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.97 — 2,623,240 ratings — published 2020
The Memory Police (Hardcover)
by (shelved 3 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.68 — 154,763 ratings — published 1994
All the Lovers in the Night (Hardcover)
by (shelved 3 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.66 — 56,847 ratings — published 2011
Água Viva (Paperback)
by (shelved 3 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.25 — 27,314 ratings — published 1973
Radio Silence (Paperback)
by (shelved 3 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.17 — 131,419 ratings — published 2016
A Little Life (Hardcover)
by (shelved 3 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.27 — 991,186 ratings — published 2015
Death's End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #3)
by (shelved 3 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.40 — 183,834 ratings — published 2010
Eileen (Hardcover)
by (shelved 3 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.55 — 135,503 ratings — published 2015
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion (Hardcover)
by (shelved 3 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.02 — 79,606 ratings — published 2019
Her Body and Other Parties: Stories (Paperback)
by (shelved 3 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.79 — 109,247 ratings — published 2017
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Paperback)
by (shelved 3 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.10 — 562,575 ratings — published 1984
Existentialism is a Humanism (Paperback)
by (shelved 3 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.98 — 48,859 ratings — published 1946
The Trouble With Being Born (Paperback)
by (shelved 3 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.07 — 11,838 ratings — published 1973
The Divine Farce (Paperback)
by (shelved 2 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.15 — 5,772 ratings — published 2009
Mrs. Dalloway (Hardcover)
by (shelved 2 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.77 — 370,786 ratings — published 1925
The Sun Also Rises (Paperback)
by (shelved 2 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 3.78 — 507,215 ratings — published 1926
Madonna in a Fur Coat (Kindle Edition)
by (shelved 2 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.29 — 129,626 ratings — published 1943
No Exit (Paperback)
by (shelved 2 times as existential-dread)
avg rating 4.11 — 48,461 ratings — published 1944
“Ouija Board Web by Stewart Stafford
Someone's been in my room,
Helped themselves to my beer.
Bottled my portal to escape,
And left behind a sober fear.
I guess I'll climb the silence,
To the mirror, if I'm still here,
Tap out a drowning rhythm,
To send an S.O.S. so clear.
A phantom knocking from within,
Coins rub my spirit board away,
Voices say breathe out and in,
Darkest night blurs into day.
Moth to the flame in a spider web,
Mummified to twist in the draught,
Here comes the eight-eyed sentinel,
To finish its ice-cold Arachnid craft.
© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
―
Someone's been in my room,
Helped themselves to my beer.
Bottled my portal to escape,
And left behind a sober fear.
I guess I'll climb the silence,
To the mirror, if I'm still here,
Tap out a drowning rhythm,
To send an S.O.S. so clear.
A phantom knocking from within,
Coins rub my spirit board away,
Voices say breathe out and in,
Darkest night blurs into day.
Moth to the flame in a spider web,
Mummified to twist in the draught,
Here comes the eight-eyed sentinel,
To finish its ice-cold Arachnid craft.
© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
―
“...all normal expectations went by the board and one’s daily habits were disrupted by a sense of ever-spreading all-consuming chaos which rendered the future unpredictable, the past unrecallable and ordinary life so haphazard that people simply assumed that whatever could be imagined might come to pass, that if there were only one door in a building it would no longer open, that wheat would grow head downwards into the earth not out of it, and that, since once could only note the symptoms of disintegration, the reasons for it remaining unfathomable and inconceivable, there was nothing anyone could do except to get a tenacious grip on anything that was still tangible…”
― The Melancholy of Resistance
― The Melancholy of Resistance










