Reviews

Review: Babel

October 30, 2022 /

Author: R.F. Kuang
Published On: August 23rd, 2022
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Genre: Fantasy, Historical Fiction
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Synopsis:

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 & Mr. Norrell — grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of translation as a tool of empire.
  • As always, the themes tackled in this book. I don’t think you will ever be able to go into an R.F. Kuang novel and not expect to come out on the other side without first having had to fundamentally dismantle a massive source of injustice throughout. Babel, in particular, grapples with the idea of how language is innately tied to power. The discussing on how imperialist countries take the primary source of culture – language – from conquered lands and then use it to stamp out that exact same culture is absolutely insane, and so wildly true. 
  • R.F. Kuang does not love her characters. At least not in the traditional sense. No, she wants to see them suffer. Sure, immense growth tends to stem from that suffering, but wow is she willing to put them through it. I truly enjoyed the cohort, especially Robin, who we follow throughout the novel. 
  • The Oxfordian setting. 
  • The ability Kuang has to make me read with my heart in my throat. I can’t really give a concrete example of this without spoilers, so I’ll just say that for parts of this novel, I could physically feel my breath racing and my chest tightening. The sheer humanity Kuang is able to invoke in her characters has the ability to send me into a spiraling mess, especially during the higher-stakes moments!
  • My brain hurts! But in a really good way. This book had me CONSTANTLY checking my own ignorance about language and the sheer power of it in society. Also, translation? SO cool.
  • Show vs. Tell: I felt as though there was a lot of “telling” instead of “showing”, at least during the first two ‘books’. For example, R.F. Kuang describes the relationship between the cohort multiple times, citing how they quickly became a family and that their relationships were so special that Robin would in fact, die for any of them. However, I wish, instead of simply telling us this, Kuang would have included more scenes between members of the cohort, giving me something tangible to reference when analyzing the development of their friendships.
  • The first two ‘books’ got a bit tedious. A lot of this book felt like dangling over a cliff and waiting to let go. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adored the small moments at Oxford and getting to experience Babel through the eyes of Robin and his peers, but it definitely did get to a point where I was like “okay, how much more sitting-in-a-classroom can I take?” 
  • My brain hurts. Did I spend hours online falling down the Tower-of-Babel rabbit hole upon picking up this book? Yes. Did I also reach a point of being unable to process any more translations while reading? Also yes.

All in all, R.F. Kuang continues to blow me away with her shear genius. The level of research and academic rigor that went into this novel is completely insane, and I have nothing but respect for her as an author and an academic.

While Babel itself was a bit long and drawn out for my specific taste, I will absolutely continue to pick up whatever she puts out next.

Rating:

Have you read Babel? What did you think?

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