What is ‘Katabasis’? The title of ‘Yellowface’ novelist R F Kuang’s new book explained
What do Homer's Odyssey and R F Kuang's new novel 'Katabasis' have in common? We explain the ancient concepts of katabasis and anabasis and their meaning in mythology.
Written by Aishwarya KhoslaUpdated: September 19, 2025 06:50 PM IST
4 min read
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R.F. Kuang, whose new novel, “Katabasis,” draws its title from the ancient Greek word for a descent into the underworld, a narrative pattern found from Homer to Toni Morrison. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Have you ever felt like you have been through hell and back? If so, you have already understood the core of one of humanity’s oldest and most enduring story patterns. This structure is getting a modern revival in award-winning author R F Kuang’s new novel, Katabasis, a title that names the tradition it belongs to. Kuang, who built her reputation with “The Poppy War” trilogy, “Babel” and “Yellowface” by weaving political critique into fantasy, has turned to the oldest narrative plot in the book. Her new novel, “Katabasis,” follows two graduate students on a rescue mission to the underworld to retrieve their professor’s soul.
The title is her thesis statement. It links her work to a lineage stretching back to Homer, Virgil, and Dante all of whom employed the ancient, paired movements of katabasis (a “going down”) and anabasis (a “going up”) to give shape to our deepest crises and our most fervent hopes.
The Canadian literary theorist Northrop Frye (1912–1991) described descent and return as one of literature’s core mythic structures. American mythographer Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) built his “hero’s journey” on the same arc, with its dark “belly of the whale” stage and upward emergence.
Tiresias appears to Odysseus during the nekyia of Odyssey Book XI, in this watercolor with tempera by the Anglo-Swiss Johann Heinrich Füssli, c. 1780–85. (Wikimedia Commons)
The archetype runs through ancient epic:
📌 Homer (8th c. BCE) has Odysseus descend to the land of the dead in the Odyssey to consult the prophet Tiresias.
📌 Virgil (70–19 BCE), in the Aeneid, has Aeneas visit his father Anchises, who reveals Rome’s imperial future.
📌 Orpheus, the mythic musician, fails in his attempt to bring Eurydice back from Hades, showing how a broken anabasis turns the tale tragic.
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📌 Heracles and Theseus, legendary heroes, descend into Hades as tests of strength.
The Anabasis
The upward return is essential. Odysseus, Aeneas, and Dante all ascend renewed. Orpheus fails, leaving his story as warning. Xenophon (c. 430–354 BCE) used Anabasis as the title of his account of the Ten Thousand mercenaries’ retreat from Persia.
The Map of Hell painting by Sandro Botticelli. This was based on Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century narrative poem The Divine Comedy.
📌 Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) mapped Hell in the Inferno before leading his pilgrim upward toward salvation.
📌 John Milton (1608–1674) in Paradise Lost presented Satan’s fall as a katabasis without return.
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📌 Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) turned the Congo into a descent into human cruelty in Heart of Darkness.
📌 James Joyce (1882–1941) reworked Homer in the “Hades” episode of Ulysses.
📌 Toni Morrison (1931–2019) in Beloved staged a psychological katabasis, as Sethe confronts slavery’s buried trauma.
Fantasy authors such as J R R Tolkien, C S Lewis, and Ursula K Le Guin all revisited the underworld, from Mordor’s fire to subterranean kingdoms to Earthsea’s land of the dead.
The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875–1961) described individuation as a katabasis into the unconscious followed by ascent into integration. Even anemology reflects the pattern. Katabatic winds flow downhill, anabatic winds rise uphill.
A copy of the Akkadian version of Ishtar’s Descent into the Underworld on a clay tablet from the Library of Assurbanipal, currently held in the British Museum in London; Goddess Ishtar on an Akkadian seal. (Wikimedia Commons)
The structure is not only Western. In Mesopotamian myth, Inanna, the ancient Sumerian goddess of love, war, fertility, and political power, descends to the underworld to overthrow its ruler, her sister Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Dead. On her return journey, she is required to deliver another living human in exchange for her freedom. In the Mayan Popol Vuh, the Hero Twins face the Lords of Death before returning. Across cultures, descent encodes crisis, ascent encodes survival. Kuang’s Katabasis revives that arc for a new generation.
Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics.
She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks.
She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year.
She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home.
Write to her at aishwaryakhosla.ak@gmail.com or aishwarya.khosla@indianexpress.com. You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More
4 min read
Tiresias appears to Odysseus during the nekyia of Odyssey Book XI, in this watercolor with tempera by the Anglo-Swiss Johann Heinrich Füssli, c. 1780–85. (Wikimedia Commons)
The Map of Hell painting by Sandro Botticelli. This was based on Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century narrative poem The Divine Comedy.
A copy of the Akkadian version of Ishtar’s Descent into the Underworld on a clay tablet from the Library of Assurbanipal, currently held in the British Museum in London; Goddess Ishtar on an Akkadian seal. (Wikimedia Commons)
