Babel - R.F. Kuang

Title: Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

Author: R.F. Kuang

Publisher: Harper Voyager, 2022 (Hardcover)

Length: 525 pages

Genre: Adult; Fantasy/Historical Fiction

Started: August 26, 2022

Finished: September 2, 2022

Summary:

From the inside cover:

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he'll enroll in Oxford University's prestigious Royal Institute of Translation - also known as Babel. 

Babel is the world's center of translation and, more importantly, of silver-working: the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation through enchanted silver bars, to magical effect. Silver-working has made the British Empire unparalleled in power, and Babel's research in foreign languages serves the Empire's quest to colonize everything it encounters. 

Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, is a fairytale for Robin; a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge serves power, and for Robin, a Chinese boy raised in Britain, serving Babel inevitably means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to sabotaging the silver-working that supports imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide: Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence? What is he willing to sacrifice to bring Babel down?

Babel - a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal response to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance and the use of translation as a tool of empire. 

Review:

This has been one of my most anticipated reads for 2022, and I was super excited to discover that my monthly book subscription box (Illumicrate) had chosen Babel for the August box (yay for pretty special editions, pictures below). Full disclosure, I did not adore the author's previous trilogy, The Poppy War, but I was a literature and languages student in university and had to take courses in the study of translation, so this book's premise was right up my alley. I know readers who aren't language geeks like me might find this book dull, but for those of you who are up for a challenge, you're in for a treat. 

As the sole survivor in his family after cholera sweeps through his dockside neighbourhood in Canton, Robin is given a choice by Professor Lovell: stay in Canton and live a life of poverty, or come to England to study. The professor's investment pays off over several years: Robin hones his already promising academic skills and becomes fluent in Latin and Greek in addition to his pre-existing Mandarin, Cantonese, and English, and is admitted to Babel for their four-year program of study. He meets the other students in his cohort who would otherwise never be allowed to study at Oxford if not for Babel: Ramy, a Muslim man from India, Victoire, a black woman born in Haiti and raised in France, and Letty, a white British woman. 

While Robin is delighted at the heaven that is Babel for a scholar like himself, he can't help but question the way he and his classmates are treated, and how unjust Britain's use of silver is towards the countries it colonizes. When he discovers the existence of the Hermes Society, he is invited to help upset the natural order of the colonial system and try to make things better for the homelands he and his classmates were torn from. 

This is a sprawling novel, covering years and a lot of detail, but the author works her magic and draws readers right in with Robin's story. The setting is both familiar and not, early Victorian England during the Industrial Revolution but a version of England that uses silver inlaid with words that in turn perform magic. The magic system was incredibly unique and fits in well with the context of the novel since only those fluent in multiple languages and who understand the intricacies of translation can make the silver work. There's so many passages where the characters go into the linguistic background of certain words and the nuance of them that it made my little nerdy heart sing. 

I love how the author gives a painfully honest analysis of the academic environment once the story pivots to Oxford: feeling that deep love for learning, but eventually becoming disillusioned due to dealing with the racism and sexism that is inherent in a lot of institutions. The author manages to call out traditional academic institutions as tools of colonialism, and how language and translation isn't usually studied for pure pursuit of knowledge, but for how knowing that language can further the expansion of the Empire. The main quote tagged in this book, "An act of translation is always an act of betrayal" is both a reference to this theme and also a common thought in the study of translation where no translation is perfect because the words simply don't exist to convey certain thoughts in some languages, and never quite does the original justice. 

Each of the four main characters are incredibly well developed and have distinct personalities that evolve over the course of the novel. Though readers see things mainly through Robin's point of view, the third person narration doesn't exclude the other three, and there are interludes from each of their perspectives (one for each) sprinkled throughout the narrative to fill in the gaps. 

This book is part of the dark academia genre, so the story is quite heavy and the ending isn't happy, so consider this fair warning. It will force you to have some uncomfortable conversations in your head about the themes presented, and though I very much enjoyed the book it definitely left me in a bit of a haze after reading. 

Recommendation:

For anyone with an appreciation for languages, or those wanting a no-holds barred criticism of colonialism and academia in general, you've got to read this. 

Thoughts on the cover:

The standard cover is lovely, I love the black and white with the gold accents. Pictures of my Illumicrate special edition copy with the slipcase are below. I love the inclusion of the original cover art on the slipcase and the silver accents.