Katabasis: Brilliant or...?

 

 

 

Katabasis (2025)

By R. F. Kuang

Harper, 541 pages.

★★★

 

Can a novelist be too clever for her own good? On one level, Katabasis is a stunning novel; on another, it is dense and tedious. Author R. F. Kuang is a very talented and intelligent. She might even be the first genius of the grew-up-on-Harry Potter generation.Or....

 

Katabasis means a descent into the underworld. Kuang’s latest novel takes us to hell, but it’s nothing like Western society's worldview. To grasp the details of Katabasis, brush up on what Aristotle, Buddhism, Dante, Daoism, Jainism, Hinduism, Orpheus, Manichaeism, Plato, Pythagoras, and Sikhism have to say about the underworld. Maybe break out your old geometry and calculus notes as well. You could read the novel just for the story within, but a deeper dive is warranted.

 

Journeys to the underworld are not unknown in Western culture–Orpheus and Eurydice, Hercules, Metamorphoses, The Odyssey, Theseus and Persephone, Jesus–but Kuang writes, “When it comes to death, the Christians are right about the immortality of the soul, but wrong about everything else.” And to think that such speculations and a journey most would not wish to take begins at England’s Cambridge University, a place that’s probably harder to get into than hell.

 

Alice Law is an American from humble circumstances whose ambition, hard work, and sharp intellect has gotten her into Cambridge. Her goal is become a magician and professor at a prestigious universe. To that end she takes the hardest road possible by becoming an advisee of Dr. Jacob Grimes, considered the world’s expert in Alice’s field of analytical magic.* Her first obstacle is that though everyone is in awe of Grimes, they despise him. Some, including much of the faculty, wishes he was dead. Grimes is abusive, steals research from his grad students, solicits favors of questionable legality, works students into a stupor (or suicide), and pits them against each other. Yet, a Grimes recommendation is the ticket to success. Gangling Peter Murdoch is more than Law’s equal. He is also popular, won a prestigious prize that eluded Alice, is late to his classes, has a carefree attitude, and becomes Law’s second obstacle.  Alice finds Peter an annoying interruption to her round-the-clock studies.

 

 As it turns out, neither wins Grimes’ favor. Alice drew a pentagram that she failed to enclose. When Grimes is blown to smithereens, Alice believes that she killed him and resolves to go to hell to bring him back, lest her career be ruined. Ironically, Peter wishes to join her as he thinks he killed Grimes. What we have next is Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey pas de deux in hell. Dante had nine descending layers of hell with Satan at the bottom; Kuang has eight ascending levels–pride, desire, greed, wrath, violence, cruelty, tyranny, Dis–with the Lethe River either winding around (Peter’s view) or running parallel to them (Alice). The City of Dis is a calm realm that terrifies Alice and is where King Yama judges souls.

 

Hell is easy to get into; making it out is harder. It also exacts a payment; if you make it through, you forfeit half of your remaining life. Moreover, any living creature who dies in hell remains and can’t be redeemed. Alice and Peter are armed with a Perpetual Flask of water, Lembas Bread that renews itself, books, chalk for drawing pentagrams, and their magical skills. Ahh, but does hell conform to the laws of physics, logic, or magic? All that is certain is that it changes. In Campbell’s hero’s journey helpers appear at key moments, but in hell how does one distinguish between a helper and a trickster? Shades are all around, some of whom benign and others who are not. Vicious bone creatures might tear you apart, Weaver Girl is definitely a trickster, the Kripkes are hunter magicians subsisting on blood, deities are unreliable, there are Shades of Grimes’ students who killed themselves, and conundrums like the Escher Trap to overcome. There are also living creatures that wandered in, including Grimes’ cat Archimedes. Is Grimes worth it? If either of them makes it to King Yama, for what should they ask?

 

Ultimately, Katabasis is one part Joseph Campbell, one part Alice in Wonderland, a few life lessons, and a large slice of syncretic religion. I’ll leave it to readers to decide whether Kuang has written a coherent novel or an obfuscation in fancy dress at a fast food diner.

 

Rob Weir