In this special event, prolific, award-winning author R F Kuang introduces Katabasis, her spellbinding novel that plunges readers into hell itself.

Kuang has been a literary hot topic in recent years, publishing six bestselling novels in seven years (and she’s only 29!). She is an admirable trailblazing writer with a deep appreciation for intellectually driven satire and the creation of building fantastical worlds and complex characters.

In Katabasis, Kuang turns her incisive gaze on the hyper-competitive world of academia.  Her depiction of the underworld is at once terrifying and darkly humorous, offering readers a fresh lens on identity, rivalry, and the cost of brilliance. Katabasis is an intellectually daring, emotionally resonant novel that challenges, entertains, and inspires.

Kuang will be in conversation with author, publisher and lawyer, Brannavan Gnanalingam. 

Kuang’s books will be for sale on the night, thanks to Unity Books Wellington. 

Presented in partnership with HarperCollins.

Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, Yellowface and Katabasis. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford and British Book Awards. She was named to the 2023 Time100 Next list and the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2024. A Marshall Scholar, she was an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she researches Sinophone literature and Asian American literature.

Brannavan Gnanalingam is an award-winning novelist based in Pōneke. He is the author of Sprigs (winner of the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Novel and shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Foundation Prize for Fiction at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards), Sodden Downstream (also shortlisted at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards), and A Briefcase, Two Pies and a Penthouse (longlisted at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards). He is also a former columnist for the Sunday-Star Times, and winner of a Qantas Media Award (as it was then known) as a film reviewer for The Lumière Reader. The Life and Opinions of Kartik Popat is his eighth novel.