Katabasis: 2025’s INSTANT No.1 SUNDAY TIMES best-seller from the author of YELLOWFACE

Prepare for one hell of a journey…

‘A big, bold fantasy romp’ GUARDIAN

‘R.F. Kuang is making magic’ ELLE

‘[A] truly original and spellbinding hero’s-journey story’ VOGUE

‘I devoured it’ RED

One of the BBC’s 25 best books of 2025

2025’s most unexpected love story is going to be hell in the new No.1 Sunday Times bestselling novel by R.F. Kuang.

Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek. The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld.

Grad student Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become the brightest mind in the field of analytic magick.

But the only person who can make her dream come true is dead and – inconveniently – in Hell. And Alice, along with her biggest rival Peter Murdoch, is going after him.

But Hell is not as the philosophers claim, its rules are upside-down, and if she’s going to get out of there alive, she and Peter will have to work together.

That’s if they can agree on anything.

Will they triumph, or kill each other trying?

‘Literary super-stardom doesn’t seem too far out of her reach’ THE HERALD

‘Mind-bending fantasy’ GRAZIA

R.F. Kuang’s book ‘Katabasis’ was a No.1 Sunday Times bestseller w/c 2025-09-01.

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Customer Reviews

3.7 out of 5 stars 66,590

4.2 out of 5 stars 26,040

4.6 out of 5 stars 312

Price

£4.99£4.99 £8.75£8.75 £20.66£20.66

This is one hell of a story. It’s just not hers to tell. The British Book Awards Fiction Book of the Year Winner The complete Poppy War trilogy with free map inside

Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperVoyager
Publication date ‏ : ‎ 26 Aug. 2025
Edition ‏ : ‎ 1st
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 560 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0008501866
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0008501860
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 848 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.9 x 5.4 x 24 cm
Best Sellers Rank: 404 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) 6 in Methaphysical & Visionary 8 in Fantasy Anthologies (Books) 14 in Military Fantasy (Books)
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