Katabasis Book Review

As a PhD graduate who barely survived the stresses of constant imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and toxic competitiveness in the industry, I found Katabasis captures that pedantic, unpleasant side of academia with remarkable accuracy, while also managing to convey a genuine love of intellectual work and discovery. Unfortunately, people like Professor Graves are all too common in academia, and its not rare to witness colleagues willing to do anything it takes to step over others to advance their own careers. Kuang is particularly adept at portraying the exploitation of students under the guise of a “rite of passage” or an academic gauntlet (again, unfortunately very familiar to many graduate students who have experienced zero hours contracts through agencies like UniTemps and found themselves doing double the work they are paid to do). Similarly, the mental health elements felt realistic and sensitively rendered, though please do check the content warnings for this one if that’s something you may find uncomfortable to read.

While I didn’t always understand why Alice clung so fiercely to Grave’s reputation (her ignorant belief that he wouldn’t occupy certain circles of Hell, even as flashbacks proved he was certainly guilty of those sins came across as woefully naive at times), the psychology resonates. The sunk cost fallacy, the pressure to achieve at all costs, the desperation inherent in completing a PhD to go on to “greater things” are all deeply, disturbingly relatable, and her obsession with graduating at all costs makes sense within this high-pressure framework.

Character development felt like one of the book’s stronger aspects. Both protagonists are deeply flawed, yet their growth over the course of the novel is compelling and believable. Miscommunications, one of my great peeves in many books, are actually handled with care here: the groundwork for misunderstandings is laid meticulously, and the reasons behing them feel entirely logical, feeding into the themes of the story. I also appreciated the rich references to classical texts and philosophers, something I know Kuang weaves in to a lot of her work. Even when the paradoxes and maths went over my head, they added texture and depth to the narrative.

One slight flaw of Katabasis is that its depiction of Hell occasionally felt like “white-space”. Kuang’s language is at turns descriptive and then stripped back, but Hell remained rather empty of a sense of space and landscape regardless of how she described it. Yet, from my (limited) experience with Dante’s Inferno, which the book is heavily inspired by, I thought the setting aligned well with the material it was inspired by. In a structural sense, the book mirrors Dante’s journey: just as he descends with Virgil through a landscape populated with familiar poets and philosophers, Alice and Peter traverse a Hell filled almost entirely by academics- apparently Oxbridge students really will do any number of things to get ahead. The abstract, sometimes distorted space recalls the Escher-esque architecture that features on the cover of Katabasis, and the Alice in Wonderland qualities are also deliberately stressed, a fact that Kuang notes in her acknowledgements. It’s at once trippy and surreal, dark and yet dreamlike.

A lot of people will debate what constitutes as Dark Academia. The genre is broad and not particularly well-defined. I’ve often thought that it’s a combination of a love of knowledge and scholarly pursuit, coupled with a critique of the more toxic aspects of higher education, often delivered with a sly, tongue-in-cheek wit. Tartt’s The Secret History exemplifies this approach, simultaneously mocking its pompous students while celebrating highbrow culture and acknowledging Richard’s enamoured view of his fellow Classics students. Babel was a scathing critique of the deep roots of colonialism in academia while still appreciating the enchantment of Oxford.

Katabasis also holds its own, operating in a similar spirit. It’s a different book from Babel, and fans of Kuang’s other workds might not universally connect to it, but as a Dark Academia novel, it hits every mark I enjoy.