Dante’s Inferno meets Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own.
Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek:
The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld
Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world.
That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.
Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams….
Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion.
With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like.
But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn’t always the answer, and there’s something in Alice and Peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom.
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17 books in catalog
Speculative fiction that blends modern East Asian history, translation theory, and academic satire has reshaped contemporary fantasy literature, exemplified by the bestselling The Poppy War trilogy. Author Rebecca F. Kuang entered the genre with this military fantasy sequence before expanding into historical fantasy and satirical fiction. Her writing has earned major recognition, including the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards, along with #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestseller status.
Born in Guangzhou, China, in 1996, Kuang immigrated to the United States at age four and grew up in Dallas, Texas. She earned her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and honed her craft at the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2016 and the CSSF Novel Writing Workshop in 2017. As a Marshall Scholar, she completed an MPhil in Chinese Studies at Cambridge University and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies at Oxford University. She went on to pursue a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University, researching diaspora, contemporary Sinophone literature, and Asian American literature. Beyond her graduate studies, she has served as the inaugural Millard Distinguished Writer in Residence at the College of the Holy Cross. She was named to the 2023 Time 100 Next list and selected for the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2024.
Kuang's novels examine the mechanics of imperial expansion, institutional corruption, and the politics of language and publishing. Her military fantasy incorporates meticulous historical research into twentieth-century Chinese military strategy and conflict, while her dark academia and satirical fiction probe how elite academic institutions and literary industries perpetuate systemic inequality. By combining precise historical grounding with sharp social critique, her narratives analyze how individuals navigate, resist, or assimilate into powerful power structures.
