Academia Goes to Hell, Literally

This episode reviews Katabasis as R. F. Kuang’s dark, cerebral fantasy about ambition, grief, rivalry, and the academic hunger to be chosen by power. The novel follows two doctoral candidates who descend into hell to rescue their dead thesis adviser, turning the underworld into both a mythic landscape and a brutal joke about academia. In three minutes, the episode asks whether Katabasis is a brilliant satire of intellectual ambition, or whether its own cleverness sometimes becomes the maze it cannot escape.