Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Babel

This is a book to help you decolonize your mind. The story itself is beautiful and the message is powerful. Fiction like this is so important. People need to see, these stories, to read these stories. Decolonial fiction like this gives us insight and hope and community and so much more.

As I reflect back on my journey reading this masterpiece I cannot help but think of the events that were unfolding in the world at the same time.

As I very slowly (for thoroughness sake, not a lack of interest) made my way through the book, I watched the world justify the genocide of Palestinians and the further colonization of Palestine. I watched so so many people, white girls and women in particular, obsess over this book but refuse to put the message into practice. If felt like a fetishization or infantilization of the book and its decolonial efforts. How many read this book and took what they wanted from it for their own selfish reasons and then watch Palestine burn and called Hamas terrorists or stayed completely silent. A completely colonizer move to take what you want from the book and leave the rest to burn regardless of the harm caused.

And yet, how many others read this work and felt its message in their bones. How many saw themselves on the page for the first time. How many people were awakened to liberations struggles. How many felt and cried and turned it into action. How many had hard and necessary conversations with themselves and/ or others because of this book.

That is the legacy of this book. The change it brought about to so many. The perverse colonizer response is not its legacy but rather further example of exactly why we need books like this.

May this book live on in the hearts of those who have read it and may it fuel our souls in the liberation/mutual aid/revolution/abolition work we do.

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erintempleton's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging tense

4.0

i think what i liked most about this novel, more than the characters, more than the plot, more than the fantasy elements, more than the depth of research, and more than the immensity of its revolution, was the author's narrative writing style. i have to specify narrative because there were some non-narrative sections that seemed more like a lecture than a novel, but the story itself was told with such a strong voice that i felt like i was being folded into its world right along with the others. loved that

the overall worldbuilding was very obviously thoughtful, but it seemed like the historical setting was more informed by the plot than the other way round. Like the author was shoving a round peg in a square hole at times, trying to make silver-working fit into the industrial revolution era. the limitations of silver were often suspiciously convenient, and by god was it obvious how robin was going to end up using the number one no-no limitation.

kind of on that note, my biggest peeve was the lack of subtlety with the author's main messages. like the main characters probably hear the "don't bite the hand that feeds you" speech a total of ten times, and by the third time, i was like OKAY, we GET IT. i just felt really beat over the head with certain themes that would have still been blatant even if they hadn't been spoken aloud via dialogue (or tacked on via footnotes).

this book reads like kuang is trying to convince the letty's of the world that robin, rami, and victoire were right, even though she knows that letty will never change. it's angry and defensive and quite realistically pessimistic, and it was not always fun to read given that colonialism and racism and academic exclusivity and misogyny and capitalistic greed are all incredibly heavy and ugly topics. it's a tough pill to swallow even if you're on board with everything the author is promoting because everyone keeps telling the characters "that's just the way it is," and the way it is is terrible.

lastly, huge trigger warnings for racism, misogyny, loss/grief, gun violence/murder, war, suicide, injury detail, and torture. know what you're getting into and be kind to yourself.
less serious trigger warnings for anyone who's ever been in a highly exclusive academic group (or cult), studied linguistics and/or translation, or struggled to maintain fluency in a language - this novel hits a little too close to home in those areas.

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limabeans's review against another edition

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challenging informative tense slow-paced

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

4.5

To start off, this story was phenomenally written and was able to beautifully portray heavy and uncomfortable topics in an intriguing way.

R.F. Kuang’s true dedication to this lengthy amount of research definitely shows in the novel. She’s able to accurately and appropriately portray loads of translations (especially with the match pairs), literature, and other cultural work. The blurbs at the bottom of pages were a very helpful touch.

This book is of course more than just the loss of concepts between translation; I would even argue that it’s not even as important compared to what else Babel contains. Kuang dives into imperialism, colonialism, identity confusion, one’s own roots, and so much more. And it ties the role of academia into all of this, which is tremendously hard to do.

My favorite aspect was probably how Kuang portrayed Robin’s struggle of personal fortunes versus greater cause.

We can see this with Letty who doesn’t understand why the other three in their cohort would throw away all they have for something that would not directly affect them. I think this was done so well because we are all just human at the end of the day— originally Robin didn’t want to throw away his perfect, academic life for the Hermes society despite knowing how fucked up it was to have what he had and how we had gotten their from Richard.

I also believe it’s extremely hard to write a character change in this context with as harsh as issues that Robin had. It was masterfully done. (not that Victoire and Ramy weren’t facing this [duh], but they didn’t have nearly the same amount of internal conflict leading to their change as Robin did.)

There were some flaws. The introduction of the magic with the silver working math pairs was a fascinating concept yet it was barely touched upon. Not that a fantasy book has to be filled with magic, but more use of this honestly innovative idea would have been nice.

I also wish more little things. Like much more time was spent in Canton or revolved more around it. That the cohort characters weren’t relatively flat for half the story. But not much to complain about.

It is hard because there’s so much hype around Babel. I do not find this story to have ‘unaware, groundbreaking’ concepts as I have been told or have seen from outside sources. (I try not to let media get in the way of biasing my own opinion though.) But it was definitely a book I will continue to think about and reflect upon; it truly was an excellent read and I’m very impressed by Kuang’s research and writing.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anybody. Seriously, I think everybody should read this book at some point regardless of genre or writing preferences.

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