“I want to write everything,” says R. F. Kuang, who, at 29, has already published five novels. “I just have too many ideas, and I can only get to them one by one.” Her sixth novel, Katabasis, out now, is a return to fantasy—the genre in which she made her 2018 debut with The Poppy War, the first in a trilogy. The Georgetown, Cambridge, and Oxford graduate—who is pursuing a PhD at Yale—then critiqued academia and colonialism with 2022’s Babel, set in a magical version of Oxford. Finally, she aimed a satirical eye at the publishing industry with 2023’s Yellowface.
Now she’s back on campus with Katabasis. Set in the 1980s at Cambridge University, the story follows two students of magic as they descend to hell to rescue their deceased professor, himself one of the most renowned magicians of his era. “I’ve still got more fantasy books in the bag,” Kuang teases. “Now I feel like I have the freedom to experiment with whatever I want.”
Ahead, Kuang discusses her approach to “bad feminist” characters, adapting her novels for the screen, and journeying to the underworld.
You’ve called this book your strangest yet. Why is that so?
Maybe strange is not so apt as indulgent. With previous fantasy works, I tried to create a secondary world with clear historical references and rules. The ground beneath your feet is pretty stable. But Katabasis is really a world of ideas, and I liked the freedom to chase a logical paradox or a philosophical puzzle.
What got you fascinated by hell?
As a child, my worst fear was being trapped in a room with no windows and no doors, really being trapped inside your own mind for infinity. I thought nothing could possibly get worse than that. So I wanted to explore why that frightened me so much.
There are some key similarities that people will pick up on between Babel and Katabasis—the university setting, the magic, the critique of academia. But there are also, of course, major differences. How would you describe those differences in your own words?
I like to think of Babel and Katabasis as two parts of a dark academia duology. There’s no continuity in terms of characters or plot or anything, but they’re both examinations of the university and its problems—and the really weird type of person who decides to stay in academia anyway. Babel is a social-historical examination of the role of the academy in colonial violence. So it takes a broader bird’s-eye approach to structural injustice, whereas Katabasis is a much more interpersonal psychological approach.
What draws you to female protagonists whose motivations aren’t always, and in fact rarely are, altruistic?
I used to be interested in “bad feminists”—characters who do not think of themselves as advocating for their own gender. In Katabasis, my main character, Alice, is fun because she was born into this generation who come of age in the ’80s and are skeptical of what they’d perceive as the “tantrums” of the ’70s: the bra-burning and women’s marches. Alice’s response is, “I’m not like other girls.” Of course, that doesn’t work. It’s a trap that she can’t run her way out of.
Speaking of gender, how has your relationship with what you’ve referred to as “identity and commodification” shifted in the time since you published Yellowface?
I think I just have a lot less patience for lazy identity markers as publishing hashtags. I understand the good intentions behind something, like, “You’re on my top-10 Asian-authors-to-read list.” I won’t get mad at somebody about this, but those are no longer the terms in which I choose to speak about myself. I don’t think the most interesting thing about me is the fact that I’m Chinese American. I think I’m interesting because of how that intersects with all the other experiences I’ve had. But I think I just really resist, now, being boxed into those reductive, easy categories that don’t say anything about the author being described.
Walk me, if you will, through your writing process for a book like Katabasis.
It’s chaos. It’s horrible. I really wish I could write a novel from start to finish with no changes and be confident in the plot and the characters, but because the ideas always come to me first and plot and character are secondary, I just chase the thoughts I think are fun. Sometimes they’re as simple as, like, here’s hyperbolic geometry. What do [I] do with that?
Over the years, I’ve learned to stop pushing myself to write to an outline and instead follow the creativity where it wants to go. So I’ll start with this document that is total nonsense, but it’s full of enthusiasm. This takes months. Then, at the end, I step back and ask, “What’s the story here? What are the character arcs? What is the narrative thread tying all of this together?” Then I rewrite and start to make it resemble something like a novel.
It’s agonizing, and it means the whole thing reads pretty badly until the 10th, 15th, 20th draft. It’s hard, it’s disgusting, but it’s also the only way I know how to write.
How do you stay grounded with so much attention on this new book?
I had to step back and increase all my content blockers. If I don’t have the willpower not to peek and freak out over perception, then my devices have to do it for me. Attention is a trap. If I’m so wrapped up in “How are people going to read this?,” then that doesn’t let me get to the stage of “What do I want to say? What do I want to create?”
It must take a tremendous amount of willpower to keep your focus on the creative process.
There’s this incredible quote in a Sally Rooney essay called “Even if you beat me.” She’s reflecting on her time in competitive debate. And she argues that competing teaches you a lot about other people, but “victory only gives you new ways of perceiving yourself.” And I like that. Reflecting on success and “winning” closes off your ability to keep learning about the world and learning about other people. I think anytime somebody becomes [too] interested in commenting on their own trajectory or how they are perceived, then that’s when the loop has closed and the creativity has run into a dead end. I’m trying hard to not think about myself, because then I would only learn about myself.
What can you tell us about your TV adaptations in progress? How involved are you, and is it daunting to have your work transformed?
I’m excited about it. I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to try to exert much creative control [on screen adaptations] because it’s not my art form. There might be a day when I decide to get more seriously into screenwriting, but it’s not right now. And since I don’t know what it’s like to direct something, it’d be silly to try to micromanage that.
So what I’ve looked for, instead, in production meetings and talks with potential collaborators, is: I want to find somebody whose vision I trust, who has a creative approach that I find bold and interesting, and then I want to hand them the idea and let them run with it. I’ve told everybody, I’m open to huge changes to the plot. The TV show or the film should not be a beat-for-beat adaptation of the novel, because that would be boring and the novel already exists. So take it as a launchpad and build something new.
What are you working on next?
I’m currently trying to finish a draft of my seventh book. It’s set in Taipei, and it’s about language, grief, and coming of age.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
A version of story appears in the Summer 2025 issue of ELLE.
