R.F. Kuang’s ‘Katabasis’ shows the hellish side of academia

Author joins long line of literary descents into the underworld but takes a new path.

- VALORIE CASTELLANOS CLARK

KUANG'S latest work is a takedown of academic life.

When I learned R.F. Kuang was taking readers to hell in her newest book, I groaned. Haven't we done this enough? I'm not just talking about Orpheus retrieving Eurydice, Dante’s “Inferno” and Virgil's “Aeneid.” Nor the 19th century poets and cults obsessed with everything chthonic. We asa culture have done katabasis — that is, a journey into the underworld — a lot recently: Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “Gods of Jade and Shadow” (2019), Leigh Bardugo’s “Hell Bent” (2023) and Netflix’s “Kaos” (2024).

(’'msureit hasnothingto do with the political instability we're facing. We probably shouldn’t worry about the historical pattern of writers becoming obsessed with the living journeying into hell whenever things aren't going great in society. )

Ididn’t think there could be much new here. “Kataba-sis” is a dark academia fantasy where the protagonist — a psychologically wounded but talented student, lacking self-love, perspective or even just one friend to talk sense into her —journeys into hell to fetch the soul of a mentor she’s in thrall to ... and may have killed. Ifthis sounds familiar, well, Kuang’s newest hero, Alice Law, does bear similarities to Bardugo’s Alex Stern.

But I was wrong — there are new things here. The journey into hell has been done, but it hasn’t been done quite the way Kuang doesit.