Katabasis portrays the harsh realities of academia, capturing the struggles of postgrads amid precarity, endless workload, and lack of support. The novel personifies the frustrations of grant writing and unresponsive supervisors, illustrating a system designed to keep individuals marginalized. Kuang's work offers a comedic yet incisive critique on academia's toxic structures through narrative, transforming Cambridge's environment into a hellscape. The plot follows postgrads Alice and Peter in their quest to find their deceased supervisor, reflecting their disillusionment within an increasingly oppressive system.
Academia is a hellscape; Katabasis just makes it literal. The American author's sixth novel is an infernal twist on the campus farce: David Lodge with demons. Kuang's previous book, 2023's Yellowface, satirized the publishing industrial complex with an irresistible mix of gallows humour and gossip.
Some structures are so intractable, she argues so insidiously self-replicating they can only be disrupted with blunt force. But she also knows that a joke can deliver the same hard clarity as rage; sometimes more.
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