List of pessimistic literature

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List of works of literature that have expressed themes closely related to philosophical pessimism.

List

Image	Name	Author	Date of publication
	Notes from Underground[1]	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	1864
—	The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas[2]	Ursula K. Le Guin	1973
	Small Moral Works[3]: 52	Giacomo Leopardi	1898
—	The Conspiracy Against the Human Race	Thomas Ligotti	2010
—	Blood Meridian[4]	Cormac McCarthy	1985
	The Road[4]	Cormac McCarthy	2006
	The Book of Disquiet[1]	Fernando Pessoa	1982
—	Infinite Resignation	Eugene Thacker	2018
—	The City of Dreadful Night[5]: 55	Thomson, James "B.V."	1874
—	The Schopenhauer Cure	Yalom, Irvin D	2005
	Candide	Voltaire	1759
—	Endgame[5]: 91	Samuel Beckett	1957
—	Lazarus (short story)	Andreyev, Leonid	1906
—	No Longer Human[1]	Osamu Dazai	1948
	The Sorrows of Young Werther[5]: 56–57 [1]	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe	1774
	The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia	Samuel Johnson	1759
—	Confession (Leo Tolstoy)[6]: 147–151	Leo Tolstoy	1882
	Journey to the End of the Night[7]: 54–55	Louis-Ferdinand Céline	1932
—	The Unbearable Heaviness of Being	Carroll Wainwright	2023
—	The Fall	Albert Camus	1956
	Kaddish for an Unborn Child	Imre Kertész	1990
—	Kappa	Ryunosuke Akutagawa	1927
	El Criticón	Baltasar Gracián	1651