Award-winning author R F Kuang talks about the art of storytelling and her role as a leading voice in contemporary literature
At 22, Chinese-American author Rebecca F Kuang, famously known as R F Kuang, had already skyrocketed to literary fame after publishing the first book The Poppy War (2018), which would go on to be a trilogy. Drawing on the Second Sino-Japanese War during the mid-20th century, her debut novel received numerous nominations and won several accolades, including the Crawford Award (given to new fantasy writers) and Compton Crook Award (presented to an author’s first novel in science fiction, fantasy or horror).
Her big break was unplanned, having limited experience in writing. All Kuang had was her father, a voracious reader, to thank for the encouragement to continue crafting stories for him to read as a means of staying connected while they were away from each other.
Eight years on, the author has six titles to her name, with the latest, Katabasis, released last August.
Kuang’s works are influenced by her highly decorated academic background. Currently a PhD candidate at Yale, she had earned a master’s degree in Chinese Studies from University of Cambridge as well as Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford.
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The 30-year-old tackles a broad range of topics and themes in her texts, which blend fantasy with rigorous intellectual, historical, cultural and linguistic analysis. They are a reflection of her growth as a person, she says.
“There are so many changes happening in my life, and the sets of questions and stakes are constantly shifting around me. I write as a way to process all of this. Right now, I’m just looking for the next big question mark.”
That said, Kuang resists weaving in much of her personal experience or perspectives into her novels, emphasising the importance of maintaining a healthy boundary with fictional personalities.
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“I don’t ever put all of myself in my characters, and I also never create a character who completely agrees with me because that feels like lazy storytelling.
The most boring kind of writing is when the author is so sure of their beliefs that they want to preach to the reader and tell them what is correct or wrong.”
Instead, she leans towards constructing fully realised, three dimensional people who have flawed views, are confrontational and morally ambiguous. “In my texts, everybody is struggling to reach the truth in different ways and that dialectic is more productive because I don’t have 100% confidence in anything I think.
“I’m always trying to change my mind, learn more and do further research into my own opinions. I’ve been wrong about many things. So to insert authority into storytelling as opposed to just respecting the complexity of it would be bad for the craft.”
Using fiction as a medium for social and political commentary, Kuang often delves into complex subjects. Critics label her work as intense, dense and emotionally heavy, hence challenging to read.
“I approach a lot of topics as a beginner and I hope my texts reflect that novice’s passion and excitement rather than a teacher’s condescension.
“When I write, I don’t think about accessibility because it’s the wrong place to start. If you’re asking whether your reader is even smart enough to understand something, then you are already going down the wrong path because you put yourself in an unequal relationship, and that is patronising and condescending.”
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Photo of Kuang by Julian Baumann
Kuang shares the same sentiment with American novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson, who believes in the capacity of ordinary people, including children, to engage in intricate prose.
“It’s condescending to yourself as a writer, to think that you have to dumb things down to become accessible. It’s condescending to the craft, to think that you have to take these complex topics and make them popular. Finally, it’s condescending to the readers because you are diminishing their intellectual ability.
“I’m not writing from the perspective of an expert for most of my work. In Katabasis, for instance, I’m not a philosopher or magician, and I’ve never studied philosophy — I had to ask people to come to my home to teach me these logical paradoxes.
“I like to think that all of my books are invitations for the reader to be curious about things with me and go down that investigative rabbit hole together, instead of me telling them: I know this really well so I simplify it for you. I actually never simplify anything,” she says matter-of-factly.
To the aspiring writers, regardless of their educational background or geographic location, Kuang recommends making full use of the free public library. “To be a good writer, you have to read constantly, comprehensively and broadly. It’s not enough to just read a lot of what you enjoy.
“You have to study various literary movements, ideally in different languages because this trains your mind to think of not only various conceptual metaphors, phrases and imagery, but how to bring them together across languages.”
Personally, her literary career has largely benefited from building connections with fellow industry players in the last decade. “I think the most dangerous thing for an author is to be solipsistic — to only exist within your own head — because you only have one version of how the world works, one philosophy and one experience.
But good writing is being able to incorporate and demonstrate extensive empathy for different subjectivities.
“And you can only get that if you go to parties or just be interested in other people. So whenever I feel like I’d rather stay home and read a book, I remind myself that living and existing in the world is the most important research I can do to write well-rounded characters.”
At book events, festivals or conferences, teenagers and young adults alike are willing to wait in line — some even fly in from other countries — for a meet-and-greet with the cultural icon.
This phenomenon proves her undeniable influence as one of the most compelling voices in contemporary fantasy and literary fiction.
“There’s got to be at least hundreds of people who told me that reading my words made them feel like they can write their own stories. Others say my work got them into reading again or made them curious about all these other fields. I think that’s the best possible feeling to have: when you are a stepping stone in somebody else’s intellectual journey.”
Asked about her favourite writers at the moment, Kuang has a cluster of classic authors in mind including T S Eliot and Sylvia Plath. “It’s hard to talk about this without spoiling the next project,” she quips.
“Every time I am working on a new genre, I try to give myself homework. For short, elegant and direct narration, I read writers who can tell compelling stories in under 200 pages, to study their word efficiency. But sometimes I’m interested in epic scope and scale. And certainly right now, I gravitate towards ambitious, thousand-page long kinds of books.”
Last October, Kuang signed a new four-book deal with HarperCollins, the first of which, called Taipei Story, is slated to be published in September. A departure from her fantasy work, the coming-of-age novel is about a college freshman doing a language study programme abroad. Though she cannot disclose too many details, she lets us in on the genre: “It’s not satire,” she smiles.
