At just 29, RF Kuang has become a major voice in contemporary fantasy and dark academia fiction, a romanticised and moody take on academic life.

Kuang has topped both the New York Times and the British Sunday Times bestseller lists with The Poppy War trilogy (2018-2020), Babel, Or The Necessity Of Violence (2022), and Yellowface (2023). Her newest novel, Katabasis, released in August this year, is a story about two students who descend to the underworld to save their professor.

The Chinese-American author was born in China and moved to the United States when she was four. After earning her bachelor’s degree, she completed postgraduate degrees at Oxford University and Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

She’s known for juggling her academic pursuits with novel writing. She debute

See Full Page