1 / 5

Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Author R.F. Kuang poses for a portrait near Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on Monday, July 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

For Rebecca F. Kuang, who has had six bestsellers before the age of 30, an eternal afterlife of leisure scares her more than the idea of going to hell.

“As a child, I was told when you die you go to heaven and heaven is where you eat cake all day and just get to hang out with your friends," said the 29-year-old Chinese American novelist, who was raised Christian, and publishes as R.F. Kuang. "And this really, really disturbed me because I think the monotony of that eternal existence was really frightening. It seems like there could be no stakes, nothing would be precious because there would

See Full Page