Illumicrate Katabasis special edition, featuring hardcover and digital edge illustration by Mary Metzger. Slipcase design provided by Harper Collins.

Art direction and typography design by Katie Gray.

Katabasis

Hardcover illustration and digital edge design created for the Illumicrate exclusive special edition of Katabasis, written by #1 New York Bestselling author R.F. Kuang and published August 2025. Art direction by Katie Gray.

Dante’s Inferno meets Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own. 

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