Katabasis

Prepare for one hell of a journey…<br /><br />'A big, bold fantasy romp' GUARDIAN<br /><br />'R.F. Kuang is making magic' ELLE<br /><br />'[A] truly original and spellbinding hero's-journey story' VOGUE<br /><br />'I devoured it' RED<br /><br />One of the BBC's 25 best books of 2025<br /><br />Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek. The story of a hero's descent to the underworld.<br /><br />Grad student Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become the brightest mind in the field of analytic magick.<br /><br />But the only person who can make her dream come true is dead and – inconveniently – in Hell. And Alice, along with her biggest rival Peter Murdoch, is going after him.<br /><br />But Hell is not as the philosophers claim, its rules are upside-down, and if she’s going to get out of there alive, she and Peter will have to work together.<br /><br />That’s if they can agree on anything.<br /><br />Will they triumph, or kill each other trying?<br /><br />2025’s most unexpected love story is going to be hell in the new No.1 Sunday Times bestselling novel by R.F. Kuang.<br /><br />'Literary super-stardom doesn't seem too far out of her reach' THE HERALD<br /><br />‘Mind-bending fantasy’ GRAZIA<br /><br />Reviews<br /><br />‘It’s Dante’s Inferno meets The Secret History and it’s at the top of our read-next pile’ Elle<br /><br />'A novel to savour … I envy those who get to read it for the first time' Rebecca Ross<br /><br />'A witty, gory, harrowing ride' Leigh Bardugo<br /><br />'A formidable, timeless work, destined to be a modern classic' Olivie Blake<br /><br />‘A sprawling, erudite tale of magic … teeming with intelligence, ideas and humour’ Marie Claire<br /><br />'The unrolling of a daring concept' Daily Mail<br /><br />'An arresting and deeply affecting novel' SFX<br /><br />'A rich novel of romance, history and magic’ iPaper<br /><br />'An immersive, worldbuilding adventure … I devoured it' Red<br /><br />'Profound … Linger[s] on the mind' New Statesmen<br /><br />'Bitingly funny dark academia' Arts Hub<br /><br />KATABASIS IS A RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB SUMMER SELECTION, ELLE'S BOOK OF THE MONTH, AND INCLUDED IN THE GUARDIAN'S ROUND-UP OF MOST ANTICIPATED 2025 FICTION.<br /><br />BABEL WAS A BRITISH BOOK OF THE YEAR, BLACKWELL’S BOOK OF THE YEAR, A WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR FINALIST AND THE DAILY MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2022<br /><br />About the author<br /><br />R.F Kuang is the author of The Poppy War Trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, and Yellowface. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, and British Book Awards. She is pursuing a PhD in East Asian Language and Literature at Yale.