Shelf Life: R. F. Kuang

R. F. Kuang writes what she knows. The Poppy War fantasy trilogy, which she wrote as an undergrad at Georgetown and as a master’s candidate at Oxford, was largely influenced by her parents’ and grandparents’ experiences in 20th-century China. Historical fantasy Babel (which has been optioned for a screen adaptation by the producers of Twilight) is set in a fictionalized Oxford. Kuang skewers book publishing’s commodification of diversity in her pandemic novel Yellowface. Finally, her latest, Katabasis, features two graduate students practicing magic at Cambridge (where Kuang earned another master’s degree) and descend to the underworld to save their professor’s soul. (“Katabasis” is Greek for “the hero’s journey to the underworld.”)