Book Review: ‘Katabasis,’ by R.F. Kuang

KATABASIS, by R.F. Kuang

There’s something inherently defiant about R.F. Kuang’s books. From her novel “Babel,” which violently dismantles a U.K. fueled by imperialist magic, to “Yellowface,” plotted around the racism inherent in publishing, Kuang always tackles challenging topics.

Now the author returns with a new bold book: “Katabasis.” In this stand-alone fantasy, two graduate students who study “magick” at Cambridge journey into hell to rescue their recently dead professor. (The word “katabasis” refers to a descent downward, usually into a metaphorical underworld.) Despite the otherworldly premise, the novel dives deep into painful and all-too-real experiences. Here, Cambridge has sorcery, but is also filled with microaggressions, manipulation and outright abuse. The message is clear: Academia is hell. Are you willing to endure it for the sake of the magick?

At the center of the novel is Alice, a dogged Ph.D. student. Not only does she tolerate school and its attendant miseries, she seems to bask in the agony of Cambridge. “She relished the thought that her adviser might be harsh, impatient, even cruel to others — for that made his attentions to her worth all the more.”

Alice is a walking contradiction. She knows how loathsome her adviser, Professor Grimes, is, but she still places him on a pedestal. She laments that women in academia don’t support each other, but she immediately betrays a former student who shares her trauma. Even as she’s forced to admit how awful her experience at Cambridge has been, she won’t stop making excuses for the people in power. She wants that same power, too, and Grimes is her only path to it.

Unfortunately for Alice, she killed Grimes in a magick experiment gone horribly wrong. Feeling guilty and desperate for a coveted recommendation, she sets off for the netherworld to resurrect him. The physical, emotional and mental toil of grad school has made Alice confident she can navigate the dangerous circles of hell. To Alice’s chagrin, she’s joined by a fellow student, Peter, the golden boy of the magick department. Alice resents him, because “academia respected discipline, rewarded effort, but even more, it adored genius that didn’t have to try. ... He was simply born brilliant, all that knowledge poured by gods without spillage into his brain.”

The revelation of what Peter’s breezy genius actually costs him is one of the most compelling and gratifying elements of the story, and the gradual peeling away of Alice’s prickly exterior is equally rewarding. Both lead the reader to wonder why, exactly, anyone would want to rescue their horrendous professor, “a genius burdened with purpose, who couldn’t spare attention for the damage he left in his wake.”

Details of Professor Grimes’s crimes are doled out at a teasing pace as Alice and Peter move through an underworld filled with physical deprivations, predatory spirits and constant demands to sacrifice more of themselves in pursuit of a goal they aren’t even sure they want to achieve.

At one point, Alice considers stepping into the Lethe, the mythical river in the underworld whose waters erase memories. “Everyone was so afraid of the Lethe — keep away, they said; stay dry — but why didn’t they understand it was mercy?”

The way Kuang captures Alice’s desire for oblivion is one of the more impressive threads of the book. It’s not that Alice wants to kill herself; she just wants to stop existing. It’s a tricky needle to thread, but Kuang pulls it off — I’ve never seen that state of being captured quite so well. Alice has sacrificed everything on the altar of her academic dreams, only to find herself in hell long before she ever utters the spell that takes her there. Her journey through the underworld serves as a perfect reflection of her journey through school: It’s destroying her, but with so much already given up, how can she possibly stop?

Though the trek through hell is a slog for Alice and Peter, it’s not for the reader — the story of the duo’s gradual reconnection and the fascinating characters they meet along the way keep the narrative moving. There’s some minor repetition — many of the dead souls have similar reasoning for not wanting to move on — but then again, this is hell. As Alice and Peter discover, what holds people back is nearly always the same.

Overall, “Katabasis” shines with devastatingly real characters and absorbing world building. Kuang’s sentences are delicious, her insights well-earned and deeply affecting. She’s also funny. Upon their arrival in hell, for instance, Alice observes that “perhaps the American theologists had been exaggerating. Meteorologically, hell didn’t seem much worse than an English spring.”

“Katabasis” isn’t always easy, but it is always enjoyable, and that’s a near impossible feat. Only a writer as thoughtful and skilled as Kuang could make a literal journey through hell so fun and so poignant. Count me among the countless others hoping for dozens more weird, dense, unapologetic novels from her.

KATABASIS | By R.F. Kuang | Harper Voyager | 541 pp. | $32