Katabasis 
By R. F. Kuang
Harper Voyager, 560 pages, Rs 699

R. F. Kuang is a name to reckon with. She has studies at Cambridge and Oxford, and is completing a PhD from Yale. She had written a fantasy novel, ‘The Poppy War’, in 2018, which was well received among the genre fans, but her 2022 novel, ‘Babel’, was a double success – it won awards within the genre but also provoked debates among the general readership. It was a fantasy addressed to two audiences, the fans of the fantasy genre, and at the same time it was meant for readers of serious literary fiction, as it raised difficult questions linking colonialism and translation.

Her next work, ‘Katabasis’, was then bound to be eagerly awaited. It is out now, and has received rave reviews. ‘The New Yorker’ has published a profile of the author. Here, two doctorate students have to navigate Hell in order to trace their professor. Along the way, we learn as much about the details of various conceptions of Hell in literary and religious works as about the working of the academia. 

Alice Law, a doctoral candidate in Analytic Magick at a fictionalized Cambridge, is devastated when her advisor, the brilliant and insufferable Professor Grimes, dies due to a botched spell. Her solution? Venture into Hell to retrieve his soul—because without his recommendation letter, her academic future is toast. Tagging along is Peter Murdoch, her academic rival, whose optimism is as irritating as it is indispensable.

Hell, in Kuang’s hands, is not just a metaphysical landscape—it’s a bureaucratic nightmare of eight courts, each reflecting moral failings and philosophical paradoxes. Think Dante meets Derrida, with a dash of ‘The Good Place’.

Kuang’s prose is razor-sharp, laced with satire and philosophical depth. She skewers academic elitism, meritocratic obsession, and the cult of suffering-as-virtue. The novel is rich with references—from Orpheus and Dante to neoliberalism and the sunk cost fallacy.

The tone oscillates between absurdist comedy and existential dread. Alice and Peter’s journey is as much about confronting their own identities as it is about rescuing Grimes. Kuang’s hell is not just a place—it’s a metaphor for the intellectual and emotional toll of ambition.

It is the intellectual texture where the book shines for more discerning readers. Kuang plays with the idea of “magick” as a linguistic and philosophical system, drawing parallels between spellcraft and academic argumentation. The Pride Court, for instance, is a library filled with pretentious souls—a delicious jab at ivory tower intellectualism.

‘Katabasis’ is not just clever—it’s conceptually daring. It’s a novel that rewards readers who enjoy unpacking layered metaphors and philosophical Easter eggs. If Babel was Kuang’s ode to language and empire, ‘Katabasis’ is her reckoning with the soul of scholarship itself.

‘Katabasis’ is anything but a breezy read. It’s dense, layered, and emotionally charged, so slow-going is entirely justified. It is not a book that asks to be liked—it demands to be reckoned with. In its descent, it exposes the infernal machinery of ambition, and in doing so, dares the reader to ask: what price intellect?