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Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Hardcover – August 23, 2022
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Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of The Poppy War
“Absolutely phenomenal. One of the most brilliant, razor-sharp books I've had the pleasure of reading that isn't just an alternative fantastical history, but an interrogative one; one that grabs colonial history and the Industrial Revolution, turns it over, and shakes it out.” -- Shannon Chakraborty, bestselling author of The City of Brass
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire.
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 for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.
For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping 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?
- Print length560 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Voyager
- Publication dateAugust 23, 2022
- Dimensions6 x 1.65 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100063021420
- ISBN-13978-0063021426
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From the Publisher
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A powerful historical military fantasy, inspired by the bloody history of China’s twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic. | Rin’s story continues in this acclaimed sequel to The Poppy War—an epic fantasy combining the history of twentieth-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters. | The exciting end to the Poppy War trilogy, R. F. Kuang’s acclaimed, award-winning epic fantasy that combines the history of twentieth-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating, enthralling effect. | A chilling and hilariously cutting novel about identity, white lies, and ambition from R.F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel. | From R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of Babel and Yellowface, this collection features all three novels in her historical military fantasy trilogy! |
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Babel has earned tremendous praise and deserves all of it. It’s Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass by way of N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season: inventive and engaging, passionate and precise. Kuang is fiercely disciplined even when she’s playful and experimental … Like the silver bars at its heart—like empires and academic institutions both—Babel derives its power from sustaining a contradiction, from trying to hold in your head both love and hatred for the charming thing that sustains itself by devouring you.” — New York Times Book Review
“A fantastical takedown of 19th-century imperialism that’s as meaty as its title. R.F. Kuang proved her prowess at blending history and magic with her debut series, The Poppy War, and she’s done it once again in this sweeping novel that blends historical fantasy and dark academia…If, as Babel suggests, words contain magic, then Kuang has written something spellbinding.” — Oprah Daily
“Absolutely phenomenal. One of the most brilliant, razor-sharp books I've had the pleasure of reading that isn't just an alternative fantastical history, but an interrogative one; one that grabs colonial history and the Industrial Revolution, turns it over, and shakes it out.” — S.A. Chakraborty, bestselling author of The City of Brass
“A fantastically made work, moving and enraging by turns, with an ending to blow down walls.” — The Guardian
"Kuang follows her award-winning Poppy War trilogy with an engaging fantasy about the magic of language. Her richly descriptive stand-alone novel about an ever-expanding, alternate-world empire powered by magically enhanced silver talismans scrutinizes linguistics, history, politics, and the social customs of Victorian-era Great Britain." — Booklist (starred review)
"It's ambitious and powerful while displaying a deep love of language and literature...Dark academia as it should be."
— Kirkus Reviews
“The true magic of Kuang’s novel lies in its ability to be both rigorously academic and consistently welcoming to the reader, making translation on the page feel as enchanting and powerful as any effects it can achieve with the aid of silver.” — Oxford Review of Books
“R.F. Kuang has written a masterpiece. Through a meticulously researched and a wholly impressive deep dive into linguistics and the politics of language and translation, Kuang weaves a story that is part love-hate letter to academia, part scathing indictment of the colonial enterprise, and all fiery revolution.”
— Rebecca Roanhorse, New York Times bestselling author of Black Sun
"Babel is a masterpiece. A stunningly brilliant exploration of identity, belonging, the cost of empire and revolution—and the true power of language. Kuang has written the book the world has been waiting for." — Peng Shepherd, bestselling author of The Cartographers
"Kuang has outdone herself. Babel is brilliant, vicious, sensitive, epic, and intimate; it's both a love letter and a declaration of war. It's a perfect book."
— Alix E. Harrow, bestselling author of A Mirror Mended
“A brilliant and often harrowing exploration of violence, etymology, colonialism, and the intersections that run between them. Babel is as profound as it is moving.”
> — Alexis Henderson, author of The Year of the Witching
“An astonishing mix of erudition and emotion. What Kuang has done here, I have never before seen in literature.” — Tochi Onyebuchi, author of Goliath
“If you only read one book this year, read this one. Through the incredibly believable alternative HF, Kuang has distilled the truth about imperialism and colonization in our world. Kuang’s depth of knowledge of history and linguistics is breathtaking. This book is a masterpiece in every sense of the word, a true privilege to read.” — Jesse Sutanto, author of Dial A for Aunties
"A book that confirms Kuang as a major talent." — SFX
"BABEL is one of the finest standalone novels I’ve read. It is a victory for literature, and its quality is what every other dark academia novel should strive to be. Paying homage to the importance of languages, translations, identity, and ethnicities, BABEL is one of the most important works of the year." — Novel Notions
"Babel is ambitious, engaging, impactful, and executed with brutal effectiveness." — reader@work
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Harper Voyager (August 23, 2022)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 560 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0063021420
- ISBN-13 : 978-0063021426
- Item Weight : 1.58 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.65 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #6,551 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #82 in Historical Fantasy (Books)
- #729 in Epic Fantasy (Books)
- #859 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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BEST BOOK OF 2022 - Babel by R. F. Kuang
Zoranne Host
About the author
Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times bestselling and Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award nominated author of Babel, the Poppy War trilogy, and the forthcoming Yellowface. She is a Marshall Scholar, translator, and has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.
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To summarize, "Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution" is a masterful exploration of translation, colonialism, and their lasting impact on our world. Its excellent commentary, real-world relevance, tragic undertones, and scholarly depth make it a must-read for anyone interested in the intersection of language, power, and history.
The margin notes were hit or miss for some people but I thought they were fun and informative. My gripe off the top of my head is that there are moments I found characters and dialogue flat or forced.
Even so I found myself copying down a bunch of excerpts from this book to return to. Some people are upset the book is not more subtle with its theme but I don’t think it’s intended to be. I think it’s supposed to be extremely in your face about it. That’s what makes it accessible. Think of how many subtle critiques are missed by the general audience. That is not possible here. Not only are these impossible to miss but they’re delivered in the midst of a pretty compelling story. It’s worth the read!
Robin is half-Chinese, raised in China until the sort of illness born of poverty kills off his family. A benefactor, an English professor who had paid for his education, whisked the boy to England. There Robin, who looks English, continues his education and is prepared to go to Oxford, to study in the Tower—Babel. The secrets of language are unearthed there, meanings and connotations prodded and molded to be understood fully. Once the student is ready and the words are fully examined, the words are combined in pairs to be inscribed on polished silver bars. In 1820 England the bars power rail lines and carriages, passenger ships, and warships Permanent lanterns light the dark. Mills are powered to produce more cloth which causes massive unemployment. More production requires more cotton—which requires more slaves—not in England, where abolitionism has won the day—but in the Americas. All over the world, Britain's colonialistic power draws riches to the Crown but also to the great companies that thrive under the system. And it is all built on the silver that Babel needs to use the words to run the Earth in Britain's image. Under it all lie the colonized lands and their oppressed peoples, all of whom work to support the Empire.
Robin and three other scholars enter Oxford together, cohorts in their studies, companions who enter the world of Oxford unaware of how much will be demanded of them.
Themes of world power, colonialism, racial inequity, class, and most of all, superiority and inferiority based on blood and money—all weave their way through the story, leading to an inevitable clash of destructive interests.
Because the well-chosen historical facts are combined with well-crafted twists and inventions of near-history, it is so simple to slide into a world that is familiar but also exotic and bizarre, a world when casual cruelty is perfectly acceptable unless you are of the wrong class or color. The genre is a blend of science fiction/fantasy based in historical fiction that verges on brief moments of horror when British civility slips into moments of brutal inhumanity.
This is not an easy read. It takes concentration and the ability to just suspend disbelief in a slightly more bizarre intensity than one might be prepared to do. The author is Chinese and studied linguistics and languages in elite British universities. One wonders how much of the anguish of intense study was her true experience.
I found the book fascinating. I recommend it to those who will approach it with the resolve to understand the four young scholars as they learn to love and then hate the place that brought them together to study language from the inside out.
Top reviews from other countries
The book itself is not a difficult read, although difficult to put down. The characters are real human people, as they begin to learn the world around them. They begin in adolescence, as we all do, struggle just as modern students do, with coursework, and the burden of trying to get the best marks they can, and the terror that they won't.
Robin Swift, the protagonist, is the half Chinese son of an Oxford professor, plucked from poverty and despair after the death of his mother from cholera. This man will never treat Robin as a son and will never acknowledge him, but that just makes Robin work all the harder in hopes of pleasing him.
At Oxford, he meets the other three members of his cohort, an Indian boy, Ramy, a Jaitian creole girl, Victoire, and Letty, who is upper-class English, but estranged from her family because she is attending university. They are there because they are destined to become Translatorthosefew who can understand multiple languages well enough to work the magical silver bars that keep everything in the Empire running as it should.
Gradually, they all learn of the injustice the British Empire has inflicted not only on them, personally, but their countries of origin. Three of them become willing members of Hermes, a clandestine group of current and former members of Babel Tower, where translators study and work. They learn that without the translators, the Empire would collapse. Among the Hermes members Robin encounters is Griffin, his half brother, now disoen3d by the professor who brought them both to England.
I loved this book. Becoming an adult is never an easy thing. Adolescence is a chrysalis time, when who we are is yet unformed, but we have already become more than our parents' children. We learn many of the same difficult truths as Robin and his cohort do, that the world we thought we grew up in is not the real one. And the author lets us experience that with them. There is plenty of action and plenty of tender moments besides.
R.F. Kuang leads us into asking ourselves who must suffer to produce the things we need and desire and who profits along the way. We learn to question ourselves as the four friends do, and if the answers are not comfortable, that's the price of growing up.
Babel is a historical fantasy novel set in an alternate version of early 19th century England where the Royal Institute of Translation in Oxford (or Babel) drives the country’s technological prowess and colonial ambitions. Translators use silver bars enchanted with “match pairs” in different languages to do so. Robin Swift, Ramy Mirza, Victoire Desgraves and Letty Price enrol at Babel, longing to belong and grappling with their loyalties to their capitalist masters and their people.
Kuang's writing is accessible, simple, and fast-paced, yet insightful with her detailed exploration of the etymology of words in multiple languages. She liberally uses footnotes throughout the book. These range from pure fiction to reality, are often quirky, but significantly add to the book. However, at times, I felt the plot was somewhat formulaic — she has taken standard tropes such as racism (Robin’s real Chinese name is never revealed), capitalism and callousness (the willingness to profit from opium even at the expense of a generation’s well-being), friendship and betrayal, and same-sex love (with subtle hints) and checked them against her plot.
The varied tempo of her writing was another slight gripe for me. While the book is somewhat of a page-turner, the story moves along at a very rapid clip in the first third of the book while it gets stretched out in the concluding parts. Nevertheless, as Robin feels as a young child, “what a pleasure it was to hold the weight of an entire, finished story” in my hands!
Pros: Inventive plot, insightful and pacy
Cons: Slightly clichéd, varying pace
Fortunately, the book arrived exactly as described by the seller – like new, with no imperfections at all. I appreciate the honesty.
Though I've only had the chance to read the first four chapters since it arrived today (it's hard to put down after just one chapter!), I can already tell it’s great literature indeed! Very well written, it’s a delight to read each page. It can be read in a fast pace without the need of action scenes. Book lovers, and mostly, bilingual readers will be amazed and absorbed by matters like translation! It was absolutely worth buying.
Overall, it was definitely worth the purchase, and I appreciate the seller's attention to packaging. Highly recommended.
Reviewed in Spain on February 28, 2024
Fortunately, the book arrived exactly as described by the seller – like new, with no imperfections at all. I appreciate the honesty.
Though I've only had the chance to read the first four chapters since it arrived today (it's hard to put down after just one chapter!), I can already tell it’s great literature indeed! Very well written, it’s a delight to read each page. It can be read in a fast pace without the need of action scenes. Book lovers, and mostly, bilingual readers will be amazed and absorbed by matters like translation! It was absolutely worth buying.
Overall, it was definitely worth the purchase, and I appreciate the seller's attention to packaging. Highly recommended.