Book Review
Mar. 21st, 2023 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariBabel: An Arcane History
by R. F. Kuang
I loved this book and I'm going to be thinking about it for a long, long time. Babel is set in an alternate 1830s Oxford. In this version of the early Victorian period, translation between languages very literally creates magic when matched pairs of words are inscribed on silver bars. This magic fuels the expansion and power of the British Empire, as well as making life easier and more luxurious for those Britons that can afford it. The center of all of this magical activity is the language institute at Oxford, which needs a steady supply of both silver and linguistic scholars.
Robin Swift is a bright Cantonese orphan brought to England as a child and trained in languages in preparation for entrance to Oxford and the language institute. There he meets four other students whose backgrounds would typically have excluded them from the academic world, and they form a tight friendship. At first, Oxford is like a paradise for them, a world dedicated to the intellect. However, Robin soon begins to see the truth of how the Empire exploits translation and the linguists who study it and how it oppresses its colonies while extracting labor and resources (including language). Eventually, he and his friends must make a choice between Oxford and resistance to imperialism.
Babel was one of the most compelling and thought-provoking books I've read in a long while. Kuang takes on colonialism in a big way and while she is not subtle, she is deft. The world-building is magnificent. How the use of translation magic operates as a metaphor for the exploitation and extraction inherent in colonialism is complex and multilayered. It's also a critique of academia. Robin and his friends are great characters who each have their own distinct developmental arcs - none of them feel like background characters or mere sidekicks for Robin. Their feelings about and experiences of Oxford are complicated and the choices they make are neither simple nor easy. The complex plot and heavy themes don't weight the book down at all - it's beautifully written such that even after over 500 pages, I still wish there was more.
by R. F. Kuang
I loved this book and I'm going to be thinking about it for a long, long time. Babel is set in an alternate 1830s Oxford. In this version of the early Victorian period, translation between languages very literally creates magic when matched pairs of words are inscribed on silver bars. This magic fuels the expansion and power of the British Empire, as well as making life easier and more luxurious for those Britons that can afford it. The center of all of this magical activity is the language institute at Oxford, which needs a steady supply of both silver and linguistic scholars.
Robin Swift is a bright Cantonese orphan brought to England as a child and trained in languages in preparation for entrance to Oxford and the language institute. There he meets four other students whose backgrounds would typically have excluded them from the academic world, and they form a tight friendship. At first, Oxford is like a paradise for them, a world dedicated to the intellect. However, Robin soon begins to see the truth of how the Empire exploits translation and the linguists who study it and how it oppresses its colonies while extracting labor and resources (including language). Eventually, he and his friends must make a choice between Oxford and resistance to imperialism.
Babel was one of the most compelling and thought-provoking books I've read in a long while. Kuang takes on colonialism in a big way and while she is not subtle, she is deft. The world-building is magnificent. How the use of translation magic operates as a metaphor for the exploitation and extraction inherent in colonialism is complex and multilayered. It's also a critique of academia. Robin and his friends are great characters who each have their own distinct developmental arcs - none of them feel like background characters or mere sidekicks for Robin. Their feelings about and experiences of Oxford are complicated and the choices they make are neither simple nor easy. The complex plot and heavy themes don't weight the book down at all - it's beautifully written such that even after over 500 pages, I still wish there was more.
