This could be from any age really. I remember reading lots of books like Harry Potter as a 4th grader to seem smart to the teachers looking at me but I didn’t understand any of it. When the big YA dystopian boom was happening, I read tons of terrible YA dystopias to seem cool but many of them frustrated me.
In France we have an author, Aurélien Bellanger, the king of super complicated novels about specific, niche stories of economy and philosophy. Hardest prose I ever had to read, but sorely proud to have read him.