Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
$16.48$16.48
FREE delivery: Wednesday, May 1 on orders over $35.00 shipped by Amazon.
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
$14.83
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Image Unavailable
Color:
-
-
-
- To view this video download Flash Player
Audible sample Sample
Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Hardcover – August 23, 2022
Purchase options and add-ons
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
Frequently bought together
Similar items that may ship from close to you
- The word loss was inadequate. Loss just meant a lack, meant something was missing, but it did not encompass the totality of this severance, this terrifying un-anchoring from all that he’d ever known.Highlighted by 729 Kindle readers
- ‘But that’s the beauty of learning a new language. It should feel like an enormous undertaking. It ought to intimidate you. It makes you appreciate the complexity of the ones you know already.’Highlighted by 684 Kindle readers
- The choice was his. Only he could determine the truth, because only he could communicate it to all parties.Highlighted by 561 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
|
|
|
---|---|---|
|
|
|
The Poppy War | The Dragon Republic | The Burning God | Yellowface | The Complete Poppy War Trilogy | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Customer Reviews |
4.3 out of 5 stars
18,473
|
4.5 out of 5 stars
7,766
|
4.4 out of 5 stars
6,587
|
3.9 out of 5 stars
34,781
|
4.5 out of 5 stars
211
|
Price | $12.31$12.31 | $12.17$12.17 | $15.99$15.99 | $17.39$17.39 | $37.99$37.99 |
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 : 1.54 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1.65 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #8,937 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #74 in Historical Fantasy (Books)
- #711 in Epic Fantasy (Books)
- #833 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
Videos
Videos for this product
0:34
Click to play video
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.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
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.
Kuang is an amazing writer, laying out difficult concepts with cool clarity and creating characters who breathe, talk, and step off the page. I could see the settings of ancient Oxford and the tower that was Babel. The idea of the magic system was so novel it doesn't even seem like magic until you think about it for a while. Everything just seems to be as it is supposed to be, until you stop and think.
Babel alters the history of the Industrial Revolution. Instead of (or in addition to) the coal and steam-based revolution that actually occurred, there is a Silver Industrial Revolution, that depends on the ability to do magic with silver bars on which are inscribed untranslatable words in two languages. A native speaker, saying the words, can cause an effect corresponding to the gap in meaning between the two words. The upshot of this alternative technology is that foreign language scholars become invaluable assets. The Oxford Institute of Translation, nicknamed Babel, becomes immensely powerful.
Because they need foreign language speakers, Babel admits students who would not normally be admitted to 1830 Oxford: women and non-Caucasians. The story principally follows four such students, Letty (a white English girl), Victoire (a girl of Haitian extraction), Rami (an Indian Muslim boy), and Robin (a half-Chinese boy from Canton). The story is told mostly from Robin's point of view. In the first half of Babel, which is fairly sedate, we follow their first three years as students at Babel. The consistent theme throughout is othering. Letty, Vikky, Rami, and Robin are not the type of students who are supposed to be admitted to Oxford, and they are treated as foreign bodies.
This relatively sedate story breaks into active violence after the four travel to Canton with Robin's English father, Professor Lovell, so that Robin can serve as an interpreter in negotiations between opium merchants and a representative of the Chinese Empire. On return to Oxford, Letty, Vikky, Rami, and Robin find themselves in the thick of a fight, about which I will say no more to avoid spoilers.
Kuang's biography (from her website) describes her as follows:
"Rebecca F. Kuang is a Marshall Scholar, translator, and the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award nominated author of the Poppy War trilogy and the forthcoming Babel. She 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."
There are a few points of note. First, Kuang is herself a person of the type that her alt-history version of the Industrial Revolution brings to Oxford. Second, she has spent time at Oxford. In her Acknowledgements, she writes
"Thank you to Julius Bright-Ross, Taylor Vandick, Katie O’Nell, and the Vaults & Garden cafe, who made those strange, sad months in Oxford bearable."
The MSc program at Oxford usually lasts nine months, so that is undoubtedly what "those strange, sad months in Oxford" refers to. (They were strange and sad in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic.)
One last point, as a Chinese-American woman at Cambridge, Oxford, and Yale, Kuang has certainly experienced the kind of othering she portrays.
*The Opium Wars are one of the most shameful episodes in the history of Great Britain. Perfidious Albion wanted to sell opium (which they got from poppy farms in Turkey) to the Chinese. The Qing Emperor forbade the use and sale of opium in China, on pain of death. (Opium sale and use was likewise illegal in England -- Parliament was under no illusions about how harmful the stuff was.) Great Britain, wanting the extraordinary profits to be obtained by selling addictive drugs to the largest nation on Earth, made war on China. Thanks in part to the gathering industrial revolution, Britain was militarily irresistibly superior to China. They forced the submission of the Emperor and the opening of the opium market. This is one of those historical events that, if you saw it in fiction, you would think implausible.
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