The Poppy War Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Poppy War | 2018 | Buy |
| The Dragon Republic | 2019 | Buy |
| The Burning God | 2020 | Buy |
R.F. Kuang began writing The Poppy War while studying Chinese history at Georgetown University. She was 19. The novel draws on the Second Sino-Japanese War and maps real atrocities onto a fantasy setting. Published in 2018, it was her debut novel, and she completed the trilogy by 2020 while simultaneously earning a master’s degree at Cambridge.
The Poppy War trilogy follows Rin, a war orphan who gains shamanic powers and uses them in an escalating conflict that mirrors twentieth-century Chinese history. The books grew progressively darker, tracing Rin’s arc from student to military leader to something resembling the dictators she fought against. Kuang has said she wanted to explore how people become monsters through incremental choices.
Babel (2022) moved to an alternate historical setting. Set in 1830s Oxford, it examines the British Empire’s exploitation of translation as a tool of colonial power. The novel won the Nebula Award and the Locus Award.
Yellowface (2023) is a contemporary satire about a white author who steals a manuscript from her dead Chinese American friend. It became Kuang’s most commercially successful book. Kuang earned her PhD from Yale in East Asian languages and literature. She has been open about the tension between academic rigor and commercial fiction.