Katabasis and a Guide to the Works of R.F. Kuang

Let’s start with Kuang’s latest release. Katabasis is based on the premise that academia itself is a special kind of Hell. It follows two post-graduate students of magic, Alice Law and Peter Murdoch, as they descend into the Underworld, hoping to retrieve the soul of Professor Grimes, their influential advisor. While Law and Murdoch initially got along, miscommunication and rivalry forced them apart. Now, however, they must work together to (hopefully) get recommendation letters and secure their academic careers. 

The journey through Hell is vividly imagined, with allusions to Dante’s Inferno and other literary works, while also borrowing from the trappings of academia itself. Kuang also posits an intelligent magic system that borrows heavily from philosophy, logic and paradoxes, making the obstacles that the characters face seem like intellectual puzzles that the reader can also solve. 

Satirical, cerebral, dramatic and thoroughly engaging, it’s no wonder that Katabasis is one of the most talked-about books of the year. It highlights Kuang’s familiarity with history and literature while delivering a solid, high-stakes emotional story about the perils and pitfalls of academia.  

If Katabasis and all its arcane references seems a bit too heavy, you can check out her non-speculative novel Yellowface. It's a fast-paced read about the dark side of the publishing industry. It follows the narrative of June Hayward, a white author who steals her Chinese-American friend’s unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own. Soon, she’s welcomed by the industry and tries to pass as racially ambiguous to avoid controversy, even as more problems arise and she struggles to keep her “literary heist” a secret. 

Gripping and deliciously entertaining, Yellowface is a breezy page-turner that opens up important conversations on the lack of racial diversity in the publishing industry and provides a juicy, behind-the-scenes account on the life of a best-selling author.

Kuang’s first foray into dark academia was Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution. Set in an alternate England (during the 1830s to 1840), it imagines a world where Britain’s imperial powers are maintained by their control over language and translation. It follows four students enrolled at Oxford’s translation institute who gradually realize their academic efforts help to perpetuate the systems of colonialism and capitalism while also contributing to cultural erasure.

Engaging and thrilling and at times didactic, Babel is perfect if you’re in the mood for a standalone read that reckons with the forces of imperialism and the history of Western civilization.

The ramifications of colonialism is a subject that Kuang returns to, time and time again. Indeed, her first fantasy trilogy is a deep dive into the topic, drawing upon the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Song dynasty for its political storyline. The first book, The Poppy War, introduces readers to Rin, a war orphan who aces the exams to attend an elite military academy, and is slowly embroiled in the war effort. The sequel The Dragon Republic continues the fatalistic tone, exploring themes of addiction and the futility of war, and The Burning God concludes the trilogy with a darkly fitting and poignant finale. 

If you’re keen on a dark and devastating fantasy series with a unique magic system inspired by drugs and martial arts, complete with flawed characters navigating questions of identity and violence, gift yourself a boxed set of The Poppy War trilogy.