Review: Babel by R.F. Kuang

Blurb:

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? 

Review:

Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by RF Kuang is an exceptional dark academia story that fully enraptured me from the get go, throwing twists and turns at every corner, while also expertly critiquing various concepts that some readers might not often think about.

Meet Robin Swift, a boy from Canton plucked from plague riddled slums by a wealthy englishman. At first, it begs the question, could this well-to-do white man have saved Robin’s family? And such a query is one we’re left considering for a good deal of time as we come to grips with the setting. The story takes place in early 1800s England, spending time in the countryside briefly, but mainly at the titular translation institute of Oxford; Babel.

At first Robin is overjoyed at this new opportunity to study, to leave the squalor behind and start this new life. His “protector”, if you will, is a mystery, one that speaks seldom beyond the affairs of the British Empire, and not at all regarding Robin and his upbringing. In fact, the only mention of this we get for a good while is when Robin slacks off and misses a single lesson. And from then on, thus begins our delve into what I consider some of the main critiques/discussions of Babel; discrimination, racism, and imperialism.

Most of the books I tend to read are rather hard fantasy, or otherwise sci-fi, and as such are far removed from the modern day. Because of this, any of these topics brought up in the stories can feel… detached, in a way, since they apply to nothing tangible. For this reason, and as I suspect many readers share that same sentiment as me, I highly recommend this book. It makes us, as readers, truly consider our history. For although Babel was not a real place (in Oxford, at least), the racism, discrimination, and all around horrid treatment of anyone beyond the majority, is most certainly real, and continues to be to this day. It is a book that makes us think of the world not from a single lens, not from one of me vs you, but of us.

To hammer this point home, one of my favorite quotes from this book is thus; The common Englishman has far more in common with the people of Canton, or Calcutta, or the shores of West Africa, than he ever will with the English lord who sits in his manor and exploits him. But empire twists this truth; it uses nation, language, and race to divide the lower classes and pit them against one another.

It comes in a passage where the students of Babel around Robin Swift must decide how to broach the issue of Empire, and how to prevent the British lords from inciting war in distant China. The culmination of these discussions are brilliant, devastating, and heart-wrenching.

All in all, Babel by RF Kuang was one of the best books I’ve read in the year 2024, and will be one that sits with me for a good deal of time hereafter. It is one I implore people to read, unless, perhaps, you do a fair amount of studying in your free time. Because at the end of the day, nobody wants to have too much Oxford, right?