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.”
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