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Mint
27-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
In Katabasis, R.F. Kuang serves dark academia as literal hell
Dark academia is a sub-genre in fantasy fiction, often involving schools of magic, secret societies and evil experiments in the backdrop of a scholarly environment. But the darkest of dark academia novels is not fantasy at all—in Donna Tartt's The Secret History, the darkness comes not from magic but from human frailty. R.F. Kuang's much-awaited novel Katabasis (HarperCollins India) has much in common with Tartt's—ambitious, jealous, secretive academics; classical allusions; a growing grimness. But it's a hardcore fantasy novel that does something daring: it takes dark academia to its logical conclusion, literal hell. 'I am getting close to the end of a draft of 'Katabasis,' which comes out in 2025. It's another fantasy novel…," Kuang had told The Harvard Crimson back in 2023. 'It started as this cute, silly adventure novel about like, 'Haha, academia is hell.' And then I was writing it and I was like, 'Oh, no, academia is hell.'" Even without this useful cue card, I could tell that's where this novel—part satire, part adventure tale—was going with within a few pages. Set in an alternate universe where magic is an acknowledged though increasingly suspect force, Katabasis (which, in Greek mythology, refers to a hero's descent into the underworld) begins in Cambridge University, which has a department of 'analytic magick" ruled over by the talented and somewhat unscrupulous Professor Jacob Grimes. When Professor Grimes dies a gruesome death during a magical experiment, his PhD students Alice Law and Peter Murdoch decide to perform some forbidden and extremely risky magic of their own to descend into hell and fetch their adviser—so that he can sign their recommendation letters. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds—finishing a PhD, a culmination of years of tedium and insanely hard work, can seem like a matter of life and death to those brave enough to aim for it—and students of analytic magick have the added pressure of needing to find their footing in a world that scorns their discipline (like, say, students of literature in the real world today). Kuang does not shy away from drawing attention to the absurdity inherent in the situation. The most esoteric and philosophical descriptions of magic are bookended by ruminations on what the actual practice of it in academia entails—publishing papers, squabbling with peers for conference seats, vying for fellowships, gossip, backbiting and bitchiness. 'Success in this field demanded a forceful, single-minded capacity for self-delusion. Alice could tip over her world and construct planks of belief from nothing. She believed that finite quantities would never run out, that time could loop back on itself, and that any damage could be repaired," writes Kuang. In the same breath, she adds: 'She believed that academia was a meritocracy, that hard work was its own reward… that department pettiness could not touch you, so long as you kept your head down and did not complain." Talk about being delulu. It is an immutable law of fantasy novels that no matter how absurd the premise sounds, notwithstanding what the fantastic elements are an allegory of, the narrative has to be convincing enough for the reader to be enthralled by the hero's journey. We know that the predicaments Swift's Gulliver finds himself in are stand-ins for the evils in British society and politics, but we still care what happens to Gulliver. Susanna Clarke's astounding Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is a send-up of Victorian-era social structures, but it has edge-of-the-seat tension. Katabasis pulls this off, but only to a certain extent. It reminded me a few times of Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder, a treatise on the history of philosophy thinly veiled as a novel, in which the stakes never quite feel high enough—though Sophie, like Alice in Katabasis (and her namesake from Lewis Carroll's work, signposted by the author early), have many thrilling adventures and near-escapes. Still, Kuang has dreamt up a fresh version of hell that feels both unfamiliar and not. Spoiler alert: it manifests itself to Alice and Peter as a university, with its eight courts or circles representing one aspect of academia: a sinister library that initially seems enchanting but is ultimately an exercise in tedium, a student residence with continuous, mind-numbing sex, and so on. Our protagonists chart hell using the accounts of Dante, Orpheus and, in an admirable intellectual stretch, T.S. Eliot—Kuang posits that The Wasteland is basically a description of hell—taking them as literal descriptions rather than allegory. The book is endlessly inventive, much like Kuang's most celebrated novel, Babel, again an epic fantasy about a group of magicians in an alternate Oxford that is ultimately a critique of colonialism. Kuang is a very skilled writer who can layer these multiple, complex themes and narratives into coherent plots (though sometimes at the cost of character ) that are immensely readable and fun in spite of their length and denseness. Still, her best work, according to me, is the relatively slighter Yellowface, a contemporary novel about publishing that satirises the industry's penchant for trending ideas and themes. It is her most self-aware work, in a way that doesn't draw attention to its cleverness like Babel and Katabasis often do. Read this genre-defying, intellectually stimulating and often weird novel for its story, then, especially the glimpses of life before hell for its protagonists when they grapple with more mundane challenges than crossing a river of eternal oblivion. Hell is other people, said Sartre. No, hell is a college, says Kuang. The novel is forthcoming in August.
Belfast Telegraph
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Belfast Telegraph
‘I'll always be a Galway girl at heart... the best thing about it? The people, without a doubt!'
I love well written psychological suspense. One of the best books in this genre has to be The Secret History by Donna Tartt, which I've read and reread many times over the years. The language is sublime, the setting of leafy Vermont a character in itself, the atmosphere wonderfully ominous, the characterisation superb, and the plot a master class in suspense writing.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
People Are Sharing The "Great" Books That They Honestly Struggled To Finish
Sometimes, no matter how classic or well-written a book is, it might not connect with the reader the same way it does with other readers. On the popular bookworm-filled r/books subreddit, u/myawn asked readers to share a well-regarded book they struggled to finish. Here are some answers that will either have you stunned or relieved you're not the only one: by Bram Stoker "This book is my nemesis. I must have tried it three times and never got even halfway through. Something about the format of diaries and letters just doesn't do it for me and breaks up my immersion in the story. I also find Jonathan and Mina's characters to be quite bland, though admittedly, I never got very far. For the supposedly quintessential novel on vampires, I have to say I was disappointed." —u/myawn by Herman Melville "It took me 35 years to 'get' Moby-Dick." —u/Lumpyproletarian Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne "I bought The Scarlet Letter on a whim when I was in a bookstore. Couldn't even get past the first chapter." —u/Upset_Way9205 Goldfinch by Donna Tartt "I am struggling a lot to finish Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. The weird thing is Tartt's The Secret History is one of my favorite books." —u/-lc- Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens "I really like Charles Dickens, but I can't get into this one." —u/LoneRhino1019 6.A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway "Anything written by Hemingway. I can't stand his writing style; it's just mind-numbing to me. I still remember the paragraph from A Farewell to Arms with the word 'and' like 30-plus times in it." —u/nildrohain454 Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien "I get to Tom Bombadil, and it's too much for me." —u/Rik78 Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald —u/Travis_Bickle88 451 by Ray Bradbury "I LOVE Ray Bradbury, and I know it's an iconic book, and the first line is still one of my favorites ever. It was just boring to me." —u/spanish_destiel Misérables by Victor Hugo "I feel like you have to be in a great place in your life to be able to read this book and not get depressed. I wasn't at my best when I started reading it and stopped when I realized it was only making me feel even worse about life." —u/inps37 Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez "I tried to read it so many times, but I just couldn't keep up with the names and family tree and all the things that were going on." —u/-zandatsu- Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon "I failed twice trying to read Gravity's Rainbow." —u/MrPanchole Quixote by Cervantes "It took me a year and a half to get through it." —u/booksandspace Jest by David Foster Wallace "I'd read it was the most brilliant book. I picked it up in the library, read 10 pages, decided it was over my head or something, and put it back." —u/Charlie500 15.A Widow for One Year by John Irving "Ugh. I'm convinced finishing it decreased my time in purgatory." —u/slackmandu 16.Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter "GEB was huge back in the day, at least among the engineering crowd I socialized with back then. I guess we all pretended having gotten through it…" —u/CalmCalmBelong Aeneid by Virgil "I don't know why because I really liked The Iliad, The Odyssey, and even Metamorphoses, which I would think would be the odd one out of the four. It's just Virgil that rubs me the wrong way. I've read them all at least once by the same translator, so I don't think that's it." —u/ElricAvMelnibone by William Gibson "I've tried to read it several times but never get more than 10-20 percent in before I decide I don't want to read it anymore." —u/mrburnttoast79 Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett "I can't get through The Color of Magic, which boggles my mind! I've been a fantasy reader for decades! I don't like it!" —u/KDLG328 and Prejudice by Jane Austen "I've tried many times with increasing levels of determination, but I can never make it through that first party scene." —u/BaileyGirl5 Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger by Stephen King "It took me a few times to get through The Dark Tower, but I was able to get through it; it was worth it because most of the series is really good." —u/nyrdcast by Jeffrey Eugenides "It has been recommended to me lots of times. I've started and stopped many many times. I think this is just going on my DNF list and leaving it at that." —u/72_Suburbs by Frank Herbert "I f*cking hated it. I despised every single character, and eventually stopped wasting my time reading it and just listened to the audiobook until it was over, rooting for everyone to die." —u/Vanish_7 by Neil Gaiman "I couldn't get through it and stopped mid-way. The main character was just too dumb and Literally every time this guy spoke, I imagined a drooling six-year-old in my head." —u/TheBackpacker2 Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson "I finished it, but it was a huge struggle. To me, that book is everything wrong with mainstream fantasy writing condensed to a brick of a book." —u/Electronic_Basis7726 and Peace by Leo Tolstoy "It was really hard to get through." —u/ztreHdrahciR Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck "As boring as the dirt on their wagon." —u/Damnmorefuckingsnow Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger "My teacher would talk about it so much I had really high expectations for it, but idk, maybe soon I'll give it another try." —u/janepaches33 Woman in Black by Susan Hill "It's not even a long book and should be able to be read quickly, but I just can't get into it." —u/BellePoivron Assassin's Blade by Sarah J. Maas "Everyone I know has said so many good things about the Throne of Glass series and has told me to start with The Assassin's Blade…big mistake. It took me MONTHS to get through, and it's a fairly small book. I don't know if it was the POV, the character, or what. I usually love Sarah J. Mass and her other series, but because of that first book, I can't get myself to open Throne of Glass." —u/SimpleResearcher8334 31.A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin "A friend lent me the first book sometime in the mid to late 2000s, and I absolutely couldn't get through. I found the number of POV characters bothersome and often found myself having to go back and skim through previous chapters in order to remember what had last happened in that character's arc. Combined with being genuinely bored by at least one of these characters, I just couldn't find the motivation to finish the book." —u/DasMotorsheep lastly: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak "I'm studying to be a librarian, and the one that got me was The Book Thief. It's a young adult novel that is widely renowned, but I felt like it was a chore to get through. there wasn't a compelling plot and so much wordy prose I felt like I was reading A Room of One's Own! Wasn't what I was expecting from a YA novel for middle school." —u/rosmitchell0rosmitchell0 Is there a book you found difficult to finish (if you finished it at all)? Comment below and share with me why!
Express Tribune
25-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
The university as monster
What makes a university monstrous? It isn't just the presence of dark academia aesthetics or secret societies. It isn't a haunted library or a forbidden manuscript. The true horror lies in the institution itselfthe way it selects, indoctrinates, exploits, and ultimately consumes. There's something inherently unsettling about the university. It dangles the promise of knowledge but demands submission. It cultivates intellect while reinforcing hierarchy. It sells the illusion of transformation, yet leaves its mark on those who pass through, moulding them into what it needs - or discarding them when they fail to serve. Literature often portrays universities as spaces of metamorphosis, places where the self is unmade and remade. But what if the university itself is not just a backdrop, not just an old house with shadowed corridors, but a living thing, a force with its own hunger? These four books don't just frame the university as a haunted mansion filled with academic ghosts. They treat it as something far more insidious: a system that tightens around its inhabitants, shaping them, consuming them, and sometimes, spitting them out. 1. 'The Secret History' There are no flickering candles or grand, crumbling ruins in The Secret History. No restless spirits haunt the halls of Hampden College. But the university in Donna Tartt's 1992 debut novel is less a setting than it is a force, an intelligence that selects, indoctrinates, and ultimately destroys. Richard Papen arrives at Hampden College, drawn to an elite Greek studies program led by the elusive Julian Morrow. What follows is an initiation into a way of thinking so insular, so intoxicating, that reality itself begins to bend. Under Julian's tutelage, Richard is welcomed into an esoteric circle of students - brilliant, aristocratic, and strangely removed from the rest of the college. They speak in ancient tongues, dress with a studied elegance, and move through the world with an unsettling detachment, as if they belong to another time entirely. Yet beneath the cultivated charm of their world lies something darker. The further Richard is drawn in, the more he begins to sense a quiet, almost imperceptible dread. Whispers of something unspeakable lurking beneath their perfect compositions and hushed laughter. Hampden's idyllic veneer cracks, revealing a place where knowledge is not merely power but a temptation, a narcotic, and, for some, a death sentence. 2. 'Babel, or the Necessity of Violence' If Hampden seduces, then the Oxford of this 2022 novel by RF Kuang is openly, unapologetically monstrous. Here, the university is not simply complicit in colonial power. It is the engine that drives it. Robin Swift, a Chinese orphan raised in England, enters Babel, Oxford's prestigious translation institute, believing in its promise of scholarship and belonging. But he quickly learns that the university extracts language and refines knowledge into a form of magic that fuels British imperialism. Robin and his fellow students are not being educated so much as they are being consumed, valued for their linguistic talents, but never truly allowed to belong. Unlike The Secret History, where the characters' downfall is largely of their own making, Babel makes it clear that the university's hunger is systemic. Far from allowing, it demands destruction. Those who recognise the monster for what it is must choose between complicity and rebellion, at great personal cost. 3. 'The Library at Mount Char' At first glance, this 2015 novel by Scott Hawkins doesn't seem to belong on this list. Its nightmarish Library is not a university in any traditional sense. But in this world, learning is indistinguishable from suffering. The Library is ruled by a godlike figure known as Father, who takes in twelve orphans and subjects them to brutal, specialised training in arcane knowledge. Each child is assigned a "catalogue" a single domain of expertise - and mastery comes at the cost of everything else. This is an education that goes a step above expanding young minds as it rewires them, hollowing out their humanity in service of something larger and more terrifying. Hawkins takes the metaphor of academia as a devouring force to its extreme. Here, knowledge erases, instead of enlightening and the pursuit of mastery is indistinguishable from obliteration. 4. 'Piranesi' Unlike the other books on this list, Susanna Clarke's 2020 novel does not immediately present itself as a critique of academia. It unfolds in an endless, labyrinthine House, where the protagonist, dubbed Piranesi, wanders, documenting his days in careful journals. At first, the House seems to exist beyond time, a world of statues and tides, quiet and infinite. But as the novel progresses, the true horror reveals itself. Ultimately, the House is the byproduct of academic obsession. Throw in the haunting figure of the Other, a visitor who intermittently enters the plot with gifts and wisdom. At its heart, Piranesi is a pursuit of knowledge that has long since abandoned its humanity. Clarke's novel turns the traditional academic journey inside out. In Piranesi, the true scholar is not the one who hoards knowledge, but the one who learns to live within it, to see it as something wondrous rather than something to be conquered. But by the time this realisation comes, the damage has already been done.
