Babel by R.F. Kuang

Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang is an improbable fantasy novel about language, colonialism, and the power of individual resistance in the face of insurmountable challenges. It's also a book about a magical school and I'm here for that.

How to describe this book...hmmm...Robin, an orphaned boy from China, is brought to England by Professor Lovell. Robin is great with languages, and his education is further encouraged by Lovell, complete with the requisite child abuse. All that work pays off for Robin when he's admitted to the prestigious Royal Institute of Translation at Oxford University where they create the silver that magically makes England the economic powerhouse of the world. At Oxford, Robin meets his first friends, learns about languages from all over the world, but he also finds himself involved in a secret group that questions all he's ever known and wanted for his life. 

It hasn't been since Cloud Cuckoo Land that I've read something and thought, "oh, boy, what am I doing with my life? This author knows so much about so much." It's absolutely crazy. So much knowledge dropped about language, colonialism, world history, and that's without taking into consideration the very smart observations about human behavior that this book makes. As if that isn't enough, it's also really readable and didn't read like some sort of textbook assignment. I am in absolute awe of this book.

I did find that the book sort of ground to a halt about three-fifths of the way through and it took me a bit to get back to exciting stuff. Some of the transitions from one location to another were a bit too "where are we going? what are we going to eat?" logistics-y for me, BUT it definitely picked back up. It's also more than 500 pages long, so this might not be the book for everyone. I'm so glad I read it, though, and do recommend it to you if you like fantasy, coming of age, or just well-written historical fiction.  4.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

The lifeblood of London carried a sharp, tinny timbre wholly unlike the rickety, clacking bamboo that underwrote Canton. It was artificial, metallic - the sound of a knife screeching across a sharpening steel..." (page 19)

This reminded me of the line in Love & Saffron when one woman said she liked to smell other people's kitchens. Our senses can tell us so much about a culture.

Ramy was less subtle. "Why are you girls?"
The white girl gave him a look of such withering scorn that Robin wilted on Ramy's behalf.
"Well," she drawled, "I suppose we decided to be girls because being boys seems to require giving up half your brain cells." (page 70)

Ha ha! I do always note when sassy feminists come to play.

"But academics by nature are a solitary, sedentary lot. Travel sounds fun until you realize what you really want is to stay at home with a cup of tea and a stack of books by a warm fire." (page 75)

Preach it. If I never had to leave my town, that would be fine with me. People always talk about how they like to travel, but planning it is a nightmare and then you have to sleep on lumpy beds and drive in places you don't know and blech. I'd rather stay home. 

"I think translation can be much harder than original composition in many ways. The poet is free to say whatever he likes, you see - he can choose from any number of linguistic tricks in the language he's composing in. Word choice, word order, sound - they all matter, and without any one of them the whole thing falls apart. That's why Shelley writes that translating poetry is about as wise as casting a violet into a crucible. So the translator needs to be translator, literary critic, and poet all at once - he must read the original well enough to understand all the machinery at play, to convey its meaning with as much accuracy as possible, then rearrange the translated meaning into an aesthetically pleasing structure in the target language that, by his judgment, matches the original. The poet runs untrammelled across the meadow. The translator dances in shackles." (page 147-148)

There's something about people defending that what they do is important that I really love. Even if I don't agree with them, I think someone's sheer enthusiasm is important. When people ask me why I chose to major in political science, I have a whole spiel about how we will ALL be citizens and need to have knowledge about how government works to be able to do our civic duty knowledgeably and I love it when other people can also defend their specialties.  It's just so wonderful to see people love things and be able to articulate why they love it.

"History isn't a premade tapestry that we've got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it." (page 177)

I honestly don't know how I feel about individuals making history, but I appreciate the thought that if everyone assumed they couldn't make a difference, everything would be stagnant.

For simple ink on paper was not enough to describe this golden afternoon; the warmth of uncomplicated friendship, all fights forgotten, all sins forgiven; the sunlight melting away the memory of the classroom chill; the sticky taste of lemon on their tongues and their startled, delighted relief. (page 236)

I just love this description of one perfect, carefree afternoon.

Oh those white people who have small hearts who can only feel for themselves. - Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince (epigraph, page 399)

Hey, say what you gotta say, you know?

Robin wondered then how much of Anthony's life had been spent carefully translating himself to white people, how much of his genial, affable polish was an artful construction to fit a particular idea of a Black man in white England and to afford himself maximum access within an institution like Babel. And he wondered if there would ever be a day that came when all this was unnecessary, when white people would look at him and Anthony and simply listen, when their words would have worth and value because they were uttered, when they would not have to hide who they were, when they wouldn't have to go through endless distortions just to be understood. (page 404-405)

We're obviously not there yet.

Things I looked up:

Corn Laws (page 32) - Tariffs and other trade restrictions on imported food, including corn, enforced in the UK between 1815 and 1846. This book did an amazing job of interweaving real events from the time period in the fantasy world. Simply brilliant.

Spa Fields riots (page 33) - "Incidents of public disorder" arising out of two public meetings in Spa Fields, Islington at the end of 1816 in which radical speaker Henry Hunt addressed the crowd.

Thirty-Nine Articles (page 316) - Historically defining statements of doctrines and practices of the Church of England with respect to the controversies of the English Reformation

Mary Prince (page 399) - (c. 1 October 1788 - after 1833) a British abolitionist and autobiographer, born to a slave family in Bermuda, brought to England as a servant in 1828, and later left her master. I've been trying to find a copy of Three Narratives of Slavery that includes Price's autobiography to borrow, but no luck yet. I'll keep looking.