I’m a fan of R.F. Kuang’s books - but this is the first which I’ve found laugh-out-loud funny. What if your University advisor died and the only way to graduate was to descend into hell and bring him back?

In a terrible sort of way, I’m glad that Kuang had such a miserable time at University. Being able to mine that psychotrauma has led to the brilliant Babel (https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/01/book-review-babel-r-f-kuang/) and now the excellent Katabasis. This is almost a love affair to the idea of being the perfect student.

It’s also deliciously catty:

She had never gotten round to trying Proust, but Cambridge had made her the kind of person who wanted to have read Proust, and she figured Hell was a good place to start.

The plot is, almost literally, Alice in Wonderlabyrinth. A metaphysical excursion through logic and fallacy, pausing lightly at revenge, with a quick diversion through intersectional feminism and its limits. Much like the play Copenhagen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_(play)), the characters often exist as a way to explore the nature of reality and how it conflicts with academia.

Perhaps it is a smidgen too long, and there are some weird Americanisms which perhaps should have been caught in the edit. A few of the observations about Hell being a writers market or modelled on an essay crisis are a little too on the nose - but, you know what, it is tremendous fun.