A level of self-absorption is a necessity for most writers. Every novel is ultimately about its author, and I like my non-fiction self-obsessed, too. Then there are the works that combine the two.

Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard specialises in semi-fictional self-obsession. A Death in the Family, translated by Don Bartlett, charts a period of his life centring around his alcoholic father’s death. Knausgaard has a spectacular gift for finding profundity in the mundane details of his existence. In other books, his fascination with himself can sometimes become too much, but the balance between intimate detail and story is pretty much perfect here.

Finding profundity in the mundane details of his existence … Karl Ove Knausgaard. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer

Another brilliant novel of self-obsession is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. The book has two halves, the first of which is the narrator’s extended rant about himself to the stars, and famously begins: “I am a sick man … I am a wicked man.”

This is bad self-obsession: tedious, aimless and indulgent. But it’s worth pushing through (or just skipping entirely) for part two, in which the tirade becomes an absorbing and unforgettable story of a dysfunctional young man who – sometimes comically, sometimes tragically – can’t see beyond himself, thereby alienating everyone he comes into contact with.

In the course of researching my own novel, I came across The Perfectionist by Rudolph Chelminski, a fantastic biography of Bernard Loiseau, the three Michelin starred chef who killed himself in 2003 on the eve of the new guide being published. It is a brilliant study of the dangers of identifying the self too closely with career success.

For those interested in more detail about why our culture feels as if it’s become more self-obsessed since the start of the millennium, The Narcissism Epidemic by psychologists Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell is essential. Their work, showing that narcissism levels seem to have started rising significantly in the 1990s, has been controversial. But their argument, that the increase, at least in part, is the result of changing parenting and teaching styles that started focusing on self-esteem and protection from failure – as opposed to the pursuit of success – is compelling and they have answered many critics convincingly.

In The Nix, Laura Pottsdam keeps her massive social network updated on her mental wellbeing via her iFeel app

My favourite novel of our solipsistic times is easily The Nix by Nathan Hill. Laura Pottsdam is a student caught plagiarising by her literature professor, the protagonist of the novel Samuel Andresen-Anderson. Pottsdam is the crushing embodiment of our Trumpian age. Not only entirely unrepentant, she is vengeful, and becomes her professor’s nemesis, all the while keeping her massive social network updated on her mental wellbeing via her iFeel app, which offers a predefined selection of emotional states from which to choose. Her followers can then broadcast their emotional responses to her emotional responses via a convenient auto-response function.

If his debut is anything to go by, Hill may well one day be seen as the Charles Dickens of our self-obsessed age.

• Will Storr’s Selfie: How the West Became Self-Obsessed is published by Picador.