Shelf Life: R. F. Kuang

Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.

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.”)

Currently pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, she recently finished a draft of her next novel, which takes place in Taipei. “The hardest part of the writing process is sitting down to write, just as the hardest part of the run is getting on the trail,” she says. “Once I’m off, it’s a perpetual motion machine.”

As for her reading habits, she loves “taking blind recommendations. I hate getting stuck in a genre rut!”

The China-born, Texas-raised, Connecticut-and-Massachusetts-based award-winning author was a Marshall Scholar; learned English reading Pride and Prejudice; wrote her first story, at 10, called “Liberty or Death” about the Revolutionary War; hosted an early book reading in high school at a local Barnes & Noble, where her mom brought snacks from H Mart; thought she’d be a military historian; did her first 10K in Athens; is married to a philosopher; landed on the 2023 Time100 Next list and the 2024 Forbes 30 Under 30 list; has a Substack; and gets bored easily.

Fan of: writing unlikable narrators; pandan pancakes; churros; scones with strawberry jam; Edinburgh (her favorite city in the world); vermouth; Yangmingshan National Park and Yehlieu Geopark in Taiwan; Jardin des Plantes de Nantes in France; the Denver Botanic Gardens (especially in winter); Maison Bertaux in London for cream tea; corgis; teaching.

Not so much: AI novel writing; the indignities of travel on book tour.

Good at: making playlists; debate.

Bad at: working titles; croquet; being on holiday (unless it’s productive).

Recent convert to: Taylor Swift.

Scroll through her book recommendations below.

I joined a Ulysses [by James Joyce] reading group this summer. Progress is very slow.

I re-read Brian Jacques’s Redwall recently, and those books are timeless!

I’d give Joanna Rakoff’s My Salinger Year to any new graduate heading off to New York to pursue a career in literature.

Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is underrated for how goofy it is. The bits about Marius courting Cosette recently had me giggling on a plane.

Bad Habit by Alana S. Portero, a translated Spanish novel that I picked up in Madrid.

Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This taught me about comedic timing.

It took me five tries, but Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell finally clicked for me on the fifth attempt.

There’s a treehouse in Richard Powers’s The Overstory that I’d like to sleep in overnight.

I read Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose in a small cottage outside Florence on my honeymoon. Unforgettable.

I found a copy of A.S. Byatt’s Possession with a cut-out of a newspaper review from 1990 inside it. It’s still one of my most treasured possessions.

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