Depending on where you hang out on the internet, the novelist R.F. Kuang is either an inescapable juggernaut (BookTok, YouTube, Reddit) or a relative unknown—her most celebrated book, 2022’s Babel , rated nothing more than the top slot in a roundup by the New York Times Book Review’s science fiction and fantasy columnist. Since its publication, however, Babel has become a sensation, hitting the No. 1 spot on the NYT bestseller list and winning the Nebula Award for best novel. Kuang followed it up with a cannily timed realist novel, Yellowface , a satire of racial attitudes in book publishing, an industry that loves nothing so much as a good bout of self-castigation. Now, with the publication of her sixth novel, Katabasis , Kuang has arrived in every sense, with a profile in

See Full Page