A katabasis, a descent into the underworld: this is what this novel is all about. Two PhD students venture into hell to find their advisor and bring him back to life so that he can grade their theses and write their letters of recommendation. Their journey takes them through the successive circles of hell – pride, desire, greed, and increasingly dreadful layers -, each presenting its own challenges. But in which circle would you find a PhD advisor? Having experienced the academic world myself, and as a woman, I could really relate to Alice, one of the two students. Going through a PhD and having to deal with a male advisor can indeed feel like a descent into hell! I particularly enjoyed the parallels the novel draws between the academic world and the underworld, as well as the way it weaves together so many different mythologies of hell: Orpheus, Dante’s Inferno, Lord Yama and Milton’s Paradise Lost. Quite an interesting subject to write a thesis on! The account of their journey through hell is rather long, but I thoroughly enjoyed wandering through these various circles and their many horrors.
“Desire was a student center.
This greatly disappointed Alice, who despite herself bad hoped for something out of those terrible Orientalist paintings-gilded sofas, hanging grapes, roast boars with apples in their mouths, and lute players in loincloths. Or even a deranged sight out of a Bosch painting-naked revelers, flowers growing out of but-tholes, bodies copulating in giant mussel shells. Giant straw-berries, crowns of cherries. Most of all she wanted to see some food. Of course it would be imprudent to eat anything—one was never to touch the food of Hell-but after those endless dunes even a facsimile of a feast would have been welcome.”