Reviews with content warning for Excrement - Babel

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Babel by R.F. Kuang

5 reviews

maple_dove's review against another edition

challenging emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I am . . . emotionally broken--heartbroken. This book . . . is absolutely amazing and everything I've ever wanted in a fantasy revolution book. Nuanced, social justice-oriented, and realistic, especially when it came to the revolution part. (I LOVE the ending!) I've always felt while revolutions in fiction can be exciting, they come off as unrealistic and too simplistic for me. Too much stems from Western fantasies of anarchy and revolution when most of us enjoy the privileges of not having to do so while literal regimes like those in Iran are happening under our noses.
Same with the main character, Robin Swift. As the book progresses, it becomes clearer and clearer that he is not a typical hero or villain, but an exquisitely, realistic morally grey character. I love him so much. Another reason is for his relatability:

'Besides, that's selfish - you don't get to take the easy way out.'
'How is that the easy--'
'You want to do the right thing,' said Ramy, bullish. 'You always do. But you think the right thing is martyrdom. You think if you suffer enough for whatever sins you've committed, then you're absolved.'
'I do not--'
'That's why you took the fall for us that night. Every time you come up against something difficult, you just want to make it go away, and you think the way to do that is self-flagellation. You're obsessed with punishment. But that's not how this works, Birdie. You going to prison fixes nothing. You hanging from the gallows fixes nothing. The world's still broken. A war's still coming. The only way to properly make amends is to stop it, which you don't want to do, because really what this is about is your being afraid.'
[...]
'You were trying to let yourself off the hook,' Ramy said, not unkindly. 'But all sacrifice does is make you feel better. It doesn't help the rest of us, so it's an ultimately meaningless gesture.

This fits me to a T, unfortunately. Whenever I've made a morally corrupt mistake, I've realized while I want to do the right thing, I've been caring more about saving myself, because I'm scared. I want to try making up for my mistakes instead of feeling guilty.
After a certain point, Babel is full of unflinching honesty. Another thing I love.

Perhaps I should start reading adult books more. I might've grown out of YA.

Favorite Quotes (honestly, the entire book should go in here, but I don't have the time nor space for that xD):

He felt a sharp ache in his chest as Canton disappeared over the horizon, and then a raw emptiness, as if a grappling hook had yanked his heart out of his body. It had not registered until now that he would not step foot on his native shore again for many years, if ever. He wasn't sure what to make of this fact. 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.

"The abolitionists with their damned moralizing. I still believe this obsession with abolition is a product of the British needing to at least feel culturally superior now that they've lost America. And on what grounds? It isn't as if those poor fellows aren't equally enslaved back in Africa under those tyrants they call kings."
[...]
[In author's annotations:]
Here Mr. Hallows forgets that chattel slavery, wherein [enslaved people] were treated as property not persons, is a wholly European invention.

'That's the thing about secret societies," said Griffin. 'They're easy to romanticize. You think it's this long courting process -- that you'll be inducted, shown a whole new world, shown all the levers and people at play. If you've formed your only impression of secret societies, from novels and penny dreadfuls, then you might expect rituals and passwords and secret meetings in abandoned warehouses.
'But that's not how things work, brother. This is not a penny dreadful. Real life is messy, scary, and uncertain.' Griffin's tone softened. 'You should understand, what I'm asking you to do is very dangerous. People die over these bars -- I've watched friends die over these bars. Babel would like to crush the life out of us, and you don't want to know what happens to the Hermes members they catch. We exist because we're decentralized. We don't put all of our information in one place. So I can't ask you to take your time reviewing all the information. I'm asking you to take a chance on a conviction.'

'Well, we can't expend energy researching any frivolous application,'
Professor Lovell
scoffed.
Robin tried a different line of argument. 'It's just that -- well, it only seems fair there ought to be some kind of exchange.' He was regretting now that he'd drunk so much. He felt loose, vulnerable. Too passionate for what should have been an intellectual discussion. 'We take their languages, their ways of seeing and describing the world. We ought to give them something in return.'
'But language,' said
Professor Lovell
, 'is not like a commercial good, like tea or silks, to be bought and paid for. Language is an infinite resource. And if we learn it, if we use it -- who are we stealing from?'
There was some logic in this, but the conclusion still made Robin uncomfortable. Surely things were not so simple; surely this still masked some unfair coercion or exploitation. But he could not formulate an objection, could not figure out where the fault in the argument lay.
'The Qing Emperor has one of the largest silver reserves in the world,' said
Professor Lovell
. 'He has plenty of scholars. He even has linguists who understand English. So why doesn't he fill his court with silver bars? Why is it that the Chinese, rich as their language is, have no grammars of their own?'
'It could be they don't have the resources to get started,' said Robin.
'Then why should we just hand them to them?'
'But that's not the point -- the point is that they need it, so why doesn't Babel send scholars abroad on exchange programmes? Why don't we teach them how it's done?'
'Could be that all nations hoard their most precious resources.'
'Or that you're hoarding knowledge that should be freely shared,' said Robin. 'Because if language is free, if knowledge is free, then why are all the Grammaticas under lock and key in the tower? Why don't we ever host foreign scholars, or send scholars to help open translation centre's elsewhere in the world?'
'Because as the Royal Institute of Translation, we serve the interests of the Crown.'
'That seems fundamentally unjust.'
'Is that what you believe?' A cold edge crept into
Professor Lovell's
voice. 'Robin Swift, do you think what we do here is fundamentally unjust?'
'I only want to know,' said Robin, 'why silver could not save my mother.'
There was a brief silence.
'Well, I'm sorry about your mother.' Professor Lovell picked up his knife and began cutting into his steak. He seemed flustered, discomforted. 'But the Asiatic Cholera was a product of Canton's poor public hygiene, not the unequal distribution of bars. And anyhow, there's no silver match-pair that can bring back the dead--'
'What excuse is that?' Robin set down his glass.

Yet Griffin and the Hermes Society belonged to bad dreams and shadows; his cohort was sun and warmth and laughter, and he could not imagine bringing those worlds together.

Language is a resource just like gold and silver. People have fought and died over those Grammaticas.'
'But that's absurd,' said Letty. 'Language is just words, just thoughts - you can't constrain the use of a language.'
'Can't you?' asked Anthony. 'Do you know the official punishment in China for teaching Mandarin to a foreigner is death?'
Letty turned to Robin. 'Is that true?'
'I think it is,' said Robin. 'Professor Chakravarti told me the same thing. The Qing government are - they're scared. They're scared of the outside.'
'You see?' asked Anthony. 'Languages aren't just made of words. They're modes of looking at the world. They're the keys to civilization. And that's knowledge worth killing for.'

English did not just borrow words from other languages; it was stuffed to the brim with foreign influences, a Frankenstein vernacular. And Robin found it incredible, how this country, whose citizens prided themselves so much on being better than the rest of the world, could not make it through an afternoon tea without borrowed goods.

Her distress belied a deeper terror, a terror which Robin felt as well, which was that Anthony had been expendable. That they were all expendable. That this tower - this place where they had for the first time found belonging - treasured and loved them when they were alive and useful but didn't, in fact, care about them at all. That they were, in the end, only vessels for the languages they spoke.
No one said that out loud. It came too close to breaking the spell.

'Only keep your mouth shut, will you? Orherwise I'll have to come and tie up loose ends, and I don't like to be messy.'
'I won't tell a soul. You have my word--'
'I don't really care about your word,' said Griffin. 'But I do know where you sleep.'

Robin saw a great spider's web in his mind then. Cotton from India to Britain, opium from India to China, and everything flowing back to Britain. It sounded so abstract - just categories of use, exchange, and value - until it wasn't; until you realized the web you lived in and the exploitations your lifestyle demanded, until you saw looming above it all the spectre of colonial labour and colonial pain.
'It's sick,' he whispered. 'It's sick, it's so sick . . .'
'But it's just trade,' said Ramy. 'Everyone benefits; everyone profits, even if it's only one country that profits a good deal more. Continuous gains - that's the logic, isn't it? So why would we ever try to break out?
The point is, Birdie, I think I understand why you didn't see. Almost no one does.'<spoiler/>
Free trade. This was always the British line of argument - free trade, free competition, an equal playing field for all. Only it never ended up that way, did it? What 'free trade' really meant was British imperial dominance, for what was free about a trade that relied on a massive build-up of naval power to secure maritime access? When mere trading companies could wage war, assess taxes, and administer civil and criminal justice?

The origins of the word anger were tied closely to physical suffering. Anger was first an 'affliction', as meant by the Old Icelandic angr, and then a 'painful, cruel, narrow' state, as meant by the Old English enge, which in turn came from the Latin angor, which meant 'strangling, anguish, distress.' Anger was a chokehold. Anger did not empower you. It sat on your chest; it squeezed your ribs until you felt trapped, suffocated, out of options. Anger simmered, then exploded. Anger was constriction, and the consequent rage a desperate attempt to breathe.
And rage, of course, came from madness.

'Besides, that's selfish - you don't get to take the easy way out.'
'How is that the easy--'
'You want to do the right thing,' said Ramy, bullish. 'You always do. But you think the right thing is martyrdom. You think if you suffer enough for whatever sins you've committed, then you're absolved.'
'I do not--'
'That's why you took the fall for us that night. Every time you come up against something difficult, you just want to make it go away, and you think the way to do that is self-flagellation. You're obsessed with punishment. But that's not how this works, Birdie. You going to prison fixes nothing. You hanging from the gallows fixes nothing. The world's still broken. A war's still coming. The only way to properly make amends is to stop it, which you don't want to do, because really what this is about is your being afraid.'
[...]
'You were trying to let yourself off the hook,' Ramy said, not unkindly. 'But all sacrifice does is make you feel better. It doesn't help the rest of us, so it's an ultimately meaningless gesture.

'But . . . but if inequality is the issue, then couldn't you have gone through the university? There are all sorts of aid programmes, missionary groups. There's philanthropy, you know, why couldn't we just go to the colonial governments and--'
'That's a bit difficult when the whole point of the institution is preserving the empire,' said
Victoire
. 'Babel doesn't do anything that doesn't benefit itself.'
'But that's not true,' said
Letty
. 'They contribute to charity all the time, I know, Professor LeBlanc was leading research into London's waterworks so that the tenement housing wouldn't be so diseased, and there are humanitarian societies all over the globe--'*
[Author's annotations]*Here
Letty
was referring to the establishment of humanitarian societies for the protection of Indigenous peoples in British territories, such as the evangelical authors of the 1837 'Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Aboriginal Tribes', which, though recognizing British presence had been a 'source of many calamities to uncivilized nations', recommended the continued expansion of white settlement and spread of British missionaries in Australia and New Zealand in the name of a holy 'civilizing mission'. The Aborigines, they argued, would not suffer so greatly if only they learned to dress, talk, and behave like proper Christians. The great contradiction, of course, is that there is no such thing as humane colonization. The contribution of Babel to such a mission, meanwhile, was to supply English teaching materials to missionary schools and to translate English property laws to people's displaced by colonial settlement.

The university gave you everything.'
'The university ripped us from our homes and made us believe that our futures could only consist of serving the Crown,' said Robin. 'The university tells us we are special, chosen, selected, when really we are severed from our motherlands and raised within spitting distance of a class we can never truly become a part of. The university turned us against our own and made us believe our only options were complicity or the streets. That was no favour, Sterling. It was cruelty. Don't ask me to love my master.'

He'd been so foolish ever to think he could build a life here. There was no straddling the line; he knew that now. No stepping back and forth between two worlds, no seeing and not seeing, no holding a hand over one eye or the other like a child playing a game. You were either a part of this institution, one of the bricks that held it up, or you weren't.

Their mistake had been so obvious. They had assumed that Oxford might not betray them. Their dependence on Babel was ingrained, unconscious. On some level, they had still believed that the university, and their status as its scholars, might protect them. They had assumed, in spite of every indication otherwise, that those with the most to gain from the Empire's continued expansion might find it within themselves to do the right thing.
Pamphlets. They'd thought they could win this with pamphlets.

He almost laughed at the absurdity. Power did not lie in the tip of a pen. Power did not work against its own interests. Power could only be brought to heel by acts of defiance it could not ignore. With brute, unflinching force. With violence.

Across the town students were fast asleep. Next to them, tomes by Plato and Locke and Montesquieu waited to be read, discussed, gesticulated about; theoretical rights like freedom and liberty would be debated between those who already enjoyed them, stale concepts that, upon their readers' graduation ceremonies, would promptly be forgotten. That life, and all of its preoccupations, seemed insane to him now;
he could not believe there was ever a time when his greatest concerns were what colour neckties to order from Randall's, or what insults to shout at houseboats hogging the river during rowing practice.
It was all such frippery, fluff, trivial distractions built over a foundation of ongoing, unimaginable cruelty.

This resonates with me so much. A lot of the discussions, panels, and events in American public schools feel so performative and seem to be treated like some kind of pawns to get academic rewards instead of real, critical rights that must continue to be fought for.

None of it really sank in; none of it really moved them, for theorizing about death never could. Words and thoughts always ran up agains the immovable limit of the imminent, permanent ending.

For how could there ever be an Adamic language? The thought now made him laugh. There was no innate, perfectly comprehensible language; there was no candidate, not English, not French, that could bully and absorb enough to become one. Language was just difference. A thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world. No; a thousand worlds within one. And translation - A necessary endeavor, however futile, to move between them.

'That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.'

She learned revolution is, in fact, always unimaginable. It shatters the world you know. The future is unwritten, brimming with potential. The colonizers have no idea what is coming, and that makes them panic. It terrifies them.
Good. It should.

Content Warnings

jelliestars's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Content Warnings

bookedandbusy's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

I really enjoyed this one! It felt a bit wordy and tedious at times, which is why I gave it the raiting I did. But overall I really liked it!

Content Warnings

spineofthesaurus's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative sad tense

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

withlivjones's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional informative reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

This is an insanely important book that absolutely deserves all the hype it has received. A perfect marriage of dark academia and magical realism that provides a detailed commentary on colonialism and how it powers England’s oldest university. The footnotes, often containing factually correct information (if at times a little embellished to fit the fantasy setting) make the novel feel like a historical account of a real event, and it can occasionally be easy to forget that this is a fictional story because it is situated so well within the time period.

At first, the novel appears like any fantasy story, and the reader is drawn into the whimsy of life as a student at Oxford like Robin and his friends. I love the fact that the magic system is based in translation theory, and over time we can see how Robin starts thinking like a translator, always considering the full implications of what words mean. Like the knowledge that no one sees the colour red the same way, it opens one’s eyes to a different way of perceiving the world.

However, as we learn about the more sinister side of Babel’s work, the scope of the novel widens to not just commenting on elitism in academia but the fact that during the British Empire’s peak, absolutely everything could be traced back to colonialism and furthering the interests of the rich, white elite - something that certain parts of the world are still recovering from even today. The pace of the novel (which is pretty slow for the first half) suddenly accelerates at a rate that is a little jarring, but for good reason as it really emphasises the shock of the students as they realise exactly what they are working for.

The characters are excellently fleshed out, especially the main four - most of the novel is from Robin’s point of view and he makes a very compelling protagonist, but I also really liked the interludes from the point of view of the other three students which give vital insight into their motivations throughout the novel. Besides these four, Kuang does a fantastic job of creating a diverse cast of minor characters, from the lovable to the despicable.

I would honestly recommend this book to everyone, especially anyone who has benefitted from a university education - as I think it is a very important and eye-opening read. It is a pretty slow start, but I found all the exposition in the first half surprisingly interesting and the action in the second half of the book is so worth the wait. Also, I can’t wait for university professors to inevitably miss the point of the novel and use it as reading material in their translation theory classes.

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