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Overview
Donna Tartt's first novel, The Secret History, contains elements of mystery and of the psychological fiction genre
. It was published in 1992. The novel’s action takes place around the elite liberal arts campus of fictional Hampden College in Vermont, a the setting that mirrors Tartt’s experience in the 1980s at Bennington College, where she started writing The Secret History as a student. Set over a school year, the story follows a tightly knit group of six students studying ancient Greek who revel in the beauty of the ancient world but become tied together by a dark secret.
