Academia is hell, literally. In R. F. Kuang’s novel Katabasis, two rival Cambridge PhD students embark on a journey through the eight courts of hell to retrieve the soul of their academic advisor, both convinced they are responsible for his untimely demise. Alice Law and Peter Murdoch are doctoral candidates in the field of “magick,” a discipline that leans closer to philosophy than any Rowling-esque incantations. As the star pupils of Professor Grimes – simultaneously one of the world’s greatest magicians and a cruel, demanding, and abusive mentor – Alice and Peter draw on every scrap of knowledge and wit they have (as well as a surprising amount of math) to navigate the depths of hell, which presents itself to them as the quad of their own familiar Cambridge College.

Would the world be better off if Grimes stayed in hell? Probably. But who else is going to help Alice secure one of the coveted jobs in her field that are so few and far between? “She wanted the golden recommendation letter that opened every door.… This meant Alice had to go to Hell, and she had to go today,” Kuang explains in matter-of-fact fashion. Though Alice initially intends to make her journey into hell alone, she is accompanied (despite her reluctance) by Peter for reasons that become increasingly suspicious. One of the great delights of Katabasis is the way Kuang’s structure floats between past and present, peeling back the layers of both Alice’s and Peter’s relationships – with Grimes, each other, and ultimately with themselves.

Kuang sensitively captures the physical, mental, and spiritual toll that any demanding pursuit can take on a person. Alice and Peter don’t need to set foot into hell to know what it’s like; they’re already there – as subordinates under Grimes. In flashbacks spliced throughout Katabasis, we see that though Alice has never exactly wished to take her own life, neither has she wished to live. Her academic dreams remain just within her reach (so long as Grimes can be rescued from hell), but she has not yet managed to find any semblance of joy in what she thought she always wanted. The River Lethe beckons to her as she sojourns the underworld, promising a slate wiped clean of all painful memory. But Peter beckons too; the revelations made about his character throughout their journey are particularly rewarding.

In Katabasis Kuang weaves together centuries of thought about the afterlife into a checkered tapestry that includes everyone from Dante to T. S. Eliot, Orpheus to the apostle Paul. As she pulls you deeper into the spiraling circles of hell, her prose is punctuated with sharp humor; one early circle finds inhabitants writing papers that can only ever seem to earn just below a passing grade. And if Kuang’s ending slips ever so slightly into wish-fulfillment that isn’t entirely consistent with the logic of her hell – well, isn’t that what we’d ultimately like out of the afterlife? Katabasis offers its protagonists and readers a sudden moment of sharp grace that, if we let it, will pierce our cynical assumptions and give us the chance to start anew.