A review by visorforavisor
Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Rebecca Kuang is doubtless one of the best writers to have ever existed. I’ve not read anything else of hers yet, but Babel alone will tell you this.
Set in an almost-fantasy 1830s and 1840s England, Babel follows Robin Swift, a Chinese-English student of languages in the prestigious “Babel”, Royal Institute of Translation in Oxford. The world in this reality runs on magical silver bars, which operate by capturing the meaning “lost in translation” between pairs of words, because nothing can truly be translated accurately. Robin learns here alongside three classmates: Ramy Mirza (a Muslim from Kolkata), Victoire Desgraves (a Haitian-French girl), and Letty Price (an English aristocrat). All are prized for their knowledge of languages, which are needed to make the silver bars work.
Babel delves into the part that languages and translation play in colonialism. European language match-pairs are far more well-known, meaning that Robin, Ramy, and Victoire in particular are useful because their knowledge of Mandarain and Cantonese (Robin), Urdu, Arabic, and Persian (Ramy), and Haitian Kreyòl (Victoire), as these are resources not yet plundered. This mirrors English (and other) colonialism deiciding to take other cultures’ resources when their own do not provide the monopoly they want. If a business owner can get an Urdu / English match-pair from Ramy, and not tell anyone about it, it’s infinitely more useful than a German / English one (which would also contain less “lost in translation” meaning, due to the languages being far more closely related).
Kuang doesn’t let her reader forget for a single minute that Robin, Ramy, and Victoire have been uprooted from their natural homes and put into England to facilitate the further exploitation of their countries and peoples. She efficiently footnotes just about everything, reminding her reader that while this may be a fantasy it’s not too far from the reality of England in this time.
White womanhood and the overlap of oppression and privilege that comes with it is explored deeply with Letty, who more or less personifies the saying that “White women are oppressed enough to pretend they’re not privileged and privileged enough to utilise their oppression”. The fact that Letty’s experience with misogyny will never, ever equate to the racism faced by her friends of colour is something we are not allowed to forget.
White readers (like myself), I recommend you read. It’s a rough read, but that’s probably a good sign. If we didn’t feel uncomfortable reading it, I don’t think we’d be acknowledging the damage we cause properly.
Babel’s subtitle, “The Necessity of Violence”, really comes into play in the latter part of the book. True change will never come from working with those who stand to benefit from the status quo, and what Robin and his friends attempt wouldn’t have worked if they’d tried to just talk with those running the empire. Kuang lets you think for a second that it could, then slashes down that fantasy with brilliant precision.
I’m sure there are people who can analyse the racial aspects of this story far better than I can, so I’m going to leave my review here, but this is one of the best books I’ve ever read and I’d encourage everybody to read it. Kuang is brilliant.
Set in an almost-fantasy 1830s and 1840s England, Babel follows Robin Swift, a Chinese-English student of languages in the prestigious “Babel”, Royal Institute of Translation in Oxford. The world in this reality runs on magical silver bars, which operate by capturing the meaning “lost in translation” between pairs of words, because nothing can truly be translated accurately. Robin learns here alongside three classmates: Ramy Mirza (a Muslim from Kolkata), Victoire Desgraves (a Haitian-French girl), and Letty Price (an English aristocrat). All are prized for their knowledge of languages, which are needed to make the silver bars work.
Babel delves into the part that languages and translation play in colonialism. European language match-pairs are far more well-known, meaning that Robin, Ramy, and Victoire in particular are useful because their knowledge of Mandarain and Cantonese (Robin), Urdu, Arabic, and Persian (Ramy), and Haitian Kreyòl (Victoire), as these are resources not yet plundered. This mirrors English (and other) colonialism deiciding to take other cultures’ resources when their own do not provide the monopoly they want. If a business owner can get an Urdu / English match-pair from Ramy, and not tell anyone about it, it’s infinitely more useful than a German / English one (which would also contain less “lost in translation” meaning, due to the languages being far more closely related).
Kuang doesn’t let her reader forget for a single minute that Robin, Ramy, and Victoire have been uprooted from their natural homes and put into England to facilitate the further exploitation of their countries and peoples. She efficiently footnotes just about everything, reminding her reader that while this may be a fantasy it’s not too far from the reality of England in this time.
White womanhood and the overlap of oppression and privilege that comes with it is explored deeply with Letty, who more or less personifies the saying that “White women are oppressed enough to pretend they’re not privileged and privileged enough to utilise their oppression”. The fact that Letty’s experience with misogyny will never, ever equate to the racism faced by her friends of colour is something we are not allowed to forget.
White readers (like myself), I recommend you read. It’s a rough read, but that’s probably a good sign. If we didn’t feel uncomfortable reading it, I don’t think we’d be acknowledging the damage we cause properly.
Babel’s subtitle, “The Necessity of Violence”, really comes into play in the latter part of the book. True change will never come from working with those who stand to benefit from the status quo, and what Robin and his friends attempt wouldn’t have worked if they’d tried to just talk with those running the empire. Kuang lets you think for a second that it could, then slashes down that fantasy with brilliant precision.
I’m sure there are people who can analyse the racial aspects of this story far better than I can, so I’m going to leave my review here, but this is one of the best books I’ve ever read and I’d encourage everybody to read it. Kuang is brilliant.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gaslighting, Colonisation, Death, Violence, Racism, Murder, Xenophobia, Racial slurs, Drug abuse, War, Torture, and Hate crime