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 be no conception of time.”

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