Katabasis means “going down,” a “descent,” a plunge. Think Odysseus’ descent into Hades, as with Aeneas in Virgil’s epic and Dante in the Inferno. In Kuang’s book, two Cambridge doctoral students, Alice and Peter, scholars of analytic magick, also descend into hell.
Their advisor, Professor Grimes, is an arrogant tyrant. He’s also a top scholar, a golden ticket for grad students who survive him. When an experiment goes awry, Grimes literally explodes, sending his spirit to the underworld. If you’re dissertating, losing your professor is a crisis. So Alice and Peter work some nifty magick and descend to hell to bring Grimes back from the dead.
To hell and back stories often involve loved ones worthy of the descent. Not here. Dark intimations swirl. Serial harasser, predator, sexual offender? Or merely difficult mentor, harsh taskmaster, self-absorbed genius? Grimes’ character is indeterminate for much of the book. What’s clear is he’s damaged Alice and Peter. Their ivory tower is tarnished.
But their quest unites Alice and Peter. Self-knowledge, self-disclosure, and mutual support help them through hell’s regions of pride, desire, greed, wrath, violence, cruelty, and tyranny. Whether they get home, and in what condition, you should discover for yourself.
I enjoyed Katabasis. Allusions abound to underworldly stories. Homer, Plato, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, T.S. Eliot—and Chinese and Norse mythology—Kuang folds their imaginative worlds into a riotous amalgamation. She pulls perennial conundrums into the adventure. Zeno’s paradoxes, Theseus’ ship, the Liar’s Paradox, Aristotle’s logic, Gödel’s theorems, Wittgenstein on language—Alice and Peter debate and deploy them in their magickal spells. More crucially, Alice and Peter are sympathetic characters. You want to know them and for them be okay.
Kuang’s book isn’t perfect. Dubious literary criticism and philosophy, misinterpretations, and misattributions distracted me. Fun with ideas and freewheeling imagination are great, but better when borne of richly textured knowledge.
Mostly, I’m glad I read the book, survived hell, and made it back to invite you, too, to go to hell – and live to tell others about it.
