Reviews

Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang

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lucidmachine's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

mamthew42's review against another edition

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5.0

R. F. Kuang's latest book, Yellowface, was recommended for the book club I facilitate for the library, so I'd held off on reading any of her books. But it didn't get any votes. I'd already been more interested in her 2022 fantasy epic Babel than Yellowface, but our library's copies had all gone missing, and I try to limit myself to books we have so I can put them on display when I'm done. When I saw a friend praising Babel about a month ago on Facebook, though, I finally gave in and ordered it from another library. After all that, we're going to order a replacement copy, because I've gotta put it on a display.

Babel: Or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution is a fantasy alt-history novel set in Oxford University in the early 19th century. It is also, though certainly not primarily, a pretty furious dressing-down of the Harry Potter books. Oxford is, after all, where many of the features of British private schooling celebrated by Rowling's books originated. Babel's protagonist, Robin Swift, is also an orphan, delivered from intolerable living conditions to the safety of a magical school. The difference, however, is in the nature of their difference: Robin is Chinese and studying in Britain. His gift that sets him apart - fluency in his first language - also marks him as subhuman.

The magic system in the novel depends on this fluency. Spells involve using words in two different languages, translating one to another. The small connotations lost in translation determine a spells effect. A magical alarm clock, for instance, uses a Chinese idiom for waking up in the morning. The original idiom describes hearing singing birds. The spell, then, wakes people up with the sound of birdsong. That which is lost is expressed by the magic. Kuang's knowledge of languages is super impressive, at least as far as I can tell. The novel has wordplay in and across Latin, Greek, French, Haitian creole, German, Chinese, sanskrit, Welsh, Old English, Japanese, and more. This all feeds into one of the central themes of the novel: "translate" and "betray" share root words. If translating a word into another language will always result in an imperfect match, then there's an impassable gap in understanding between cultures. Our languages directly inform our worldviews.

Babel is highly anti-imperialist, some say to a fault. I've read reviews that complained about how often the book takes time to point out the sins and failures of the British empire. Some say the book doesn't trust the reader to know that imperialism is bad. I argue instead that the book is attempting its own form of translation. Sure, you know empire is bad. But you don't necessarily feel alienated and surrounded by it the way Robin is. Kuang cannot let the empire sink to the level of backdrop the way it has for so many of us in the imperial core because the empire will never do that for Robin. His existence is one of double-consciousness, both of and outside of empire, and there would be a canyon of difference between reader and protagonist if we were allowed to forget that. To do any less would be, to use the novel's own analogy, a betrayal of the ideas it needs to get across. It's a position I'd assume Kuang is pretty familiar with, as a Chinese-born American who attended Georgetown, Cambridge, Oxford, and Yale. She's no stranger to British academia but her familiarity with it doesn't allow her to be an insider to it, either. She intimately understands Robin's position, and I'm put off by the audacity it takes to demand she trust that the reader understands it just as well.

Kuang makes heavy use of footnotes in a pretty similar way to Chain-Gang All-Stars. The contextual details contained in the footnotes are divided pretty equally between actual historical fact and facts of this alternate history, to the point where it would probably take months of research to fully differentiate truth from fiction. That said, even the fictional details ring true and get across something real about the time. The novel is too granular in its details to accurately call an allegory, but most of its components do function well on an allegorical level. This might not be Oxford as it ever existed, but it's all certainly true of Oxford and what Oxford represents.

Without spoiling much more than I have, I'll say it's worth giving this book a shot. If you're a former Potter fan who's since realized the extent to which you have to put that franchise to pasture, try this book as shot and chaser. If you're looking for a fantasy novel rooted in revolutionary theory, pick this up. If you just want a fun fantasy about languages, I guess just hold your nose when it gets mad about atrocities committed by empire. It's a book that's equally fun and thought-provoking, so right up my alley.