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m_elisabth's review against another edition
4.0
4.75 ⭐️
an enchanting story rich in knowledge, history and carefully crafted characters. also, i want to study etymology now
an enchanting story rich in knowledge, history and carefully crafted characters. also, i want to study etymology now
the_bookish_hag's review against another edition
5.0
Babel takes place in the 1830’s predominantly in England. It is centered around the journey of Robin Swift and how he went from a young boy in Canton to a revolutionary in England. Robin Swift is given the opportunity to leave poverty, disease, and his motherland of China behind. He exchanges this for an academic opportunity given to him by a visiting Englishman; strings attached. What transcends in the years to come are a whirlwind of culture, history, sexism, light magic, racism, friendship, and revolution. Though this is set in the 1830’s the issues within are still unfortunately relevant today. Do not let the size of this book overwhelm you because this is not as difficult of a read as one may think as long as you have an open mind. R.F Kuang also adds little annotations which help readers understand historical context without having to stop and look up something which I appreciated.
After making his way to England from China, Robin spends the next few years under the care of the Englishman who brought him over, Professor Lovell. He is tutored in multiple languages so that he can fulfill part of his bargain which is to attend the most prestigious, Oxford University, and become a translator. In this world translators are used to help facilitate the use of Babel's subtle magic system which feels very easy to digest as it's linguistics based with light fantasy elements. Using words, translators find connecting words across languages then apply them to silver bars to use almost like a spell. Silver bars can help with many things like keep bridges up, help gun men shoot more accurately and sewage management. After years of relentless tutoring Robin is accepted into Babel, the translation school within Oxford. Robin makes quick friends with his three fellow Babblers. As an Indo-Trinidadian and Filipino I specifically adored this friend group of a Haitian girl named Victoire, a Bengali Muslim boy named Rami, an English rose named Letty and of course, Robin. Kaung repeatedly reminds you while you are laughing and learning with our beloved babblers that it is not permanent that there is a sleeping giant awaiting them. I appreciated this little cluster and yet I was continuously worried for them.
There is a slow realization of our BIPOC babblers, that what they are learning and working towards comes at a cost to others like them who cannot afford the same opportunities. They realize how everything in their world is connected and under the shadow of England's empirical greed as well as her unwillingness to see any one other than white and British to be truly human. They understand who truly sees and hears them versus those who would rather keep calm and carry on. What this book does well is create solidarity between those who are marginalized and wish to make a difference. This attempts to break barriers of race, gender, and class. There are added historical twists. For instance, the silver industrial revolution, or what we know as the industrial revolution, Kaung portrays how it affected the white working class in the book. She then bridges the gap over time to show the full picture of working class peoples across many nations and how they are being exploited by the British government.
This book is to be read with an open mind and a listening heart because some topics are heavy such as white fragility, sexism, colonization along with the guilt those topics can leave. The story telling gives you most of what you need or want in a novel. I would say I personally would have liked the moments we learned deeper about Victoire, Ramy, and Letty to be a bit more early on but I also understand their placement. Needless to say when Ramy laughed, I snickered. When Robin cried I sobbed, and when Letty bristled I bristled back. The sharing between Ramy, Victoire, and Robin and their quick jabs at others about the lives they lead felt like my own friends and their experiences. I also appreciate that there is no romance in this story, it has more important things to say. When attempting to answer is violence necessary during times of revolution I think this book helps you understand that yes there is always more nuance but sometimes to be taken seriously you have to speak the language of your oppressor. I read half and also listened to the audiobook and the voice actors do a wonderful job at narrating. Considering how much of this book is dependent on language I found it more enjoyable to hear the pronunciations by native speakers than read them. Please keep in mind I tried to keep spoilers to a minimum so forgive me if you think I am missing important information. If you are willing to read something with heavy topics that asks you to address your own personal prejudices, please try Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History. If you find yourself combative when it comes to these issues, I still think you should try.
After making his way to England from China, Robin spends the next few years under the care of the Englishman who brought him over, Professor Lovell. He is tutored in multiple languages so that he can fulfill part of his bargain which is to attend the most prestigious, Oxford University, and become a translator. In this world translators are used to help facilitate the use of Babel's subtle magic system which feels very easy to digest as it's linguistics based with light fantasy elements. Using words, translators find connecting words across languages then apply them to silver bars to use almost like a spell. Silver bars can help with many things like keep bridges up, help gun men shoot more accurately and sewage management. After years of relentless tutoring Robin is accepted into Babel, the translation school within Oxford. Robin makes quick friends with his three fellow Babblers. As an Indo-Trinidadian and Filipino I specifically adored this friend group of a Haitian girl named Victoire, a Bengali Muslim boy named Rami, an English rose named Letty and of course, Robin. Kaung repeatedly reminds you while you are laughing and learning with our beloved babblers that it is not permanent that there is a sleeping giant awaiting them. I appreciated this little cluster and yet I was continuously worried for them.
There is a slow realization of our BIPOC babblers, that what they are learning and working towards comes at a cost to others like them who cannot afford the same opportunities. They realize how everything in their world is connected and under the shadow of England's empirical greed as well as her unwillingness to see any one other than white and British to be truly human. They understand who truly sees and hears them versus those who would rather keep calm and carry on. What this book does well is create solidarity between those who are marginalized and wish to make a difference. This attempts to break barriers of race, gender, and class. There are added historical twists. For instance, the silver industrial revolution, or what we know as the industrial revolution, Kaung portrays how it affected the white working class in the book. She then bridges the gap over time to show the full picture of working class peoples across many nations and how they are being exploited by the British government.
This book is to be read with an open mind and a listening heart because some topics are heavy such as white fragility, sexism, colonization along with the guilt those topics can leave. The story telling gives you most of what you need or want in a novel. I would say I personally would have liked the moments we learned deeper about Victoire, Ramy, and Letty to be a bit more early on but I also understand their placement. Needless to say when Ramy laughed, I snickered. When Robin cried I sobbed, and when Letty bristled I bristled back. The sharing between Ramy, Victoire, and Robin and their quick jabs at others about the lives they lead felt like my own friends and their experiences. I also appreciate that there is no romance in this story, it has more important things to say. When attempting to answer is violence necessary during times of revolution I think this book helps you understand that yes there is always more nuance but sometimes to be taken seriously you have to speak the language of your oppressor. I read half and also listened to the audiobook and the voice actors do a wonderful job at narrating. Considering how much of this book is dependent on language I found it more enjoyable to hear the pronunciations by native speakers than read them. Please keep in mind I tried to keep spoilers to a minimum so forgive me if you think I am missing important information. If you are willing to read something with heavy topics that asks you to address your own personal prejudices, please try Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History. If you find yourself combative when it comes to these issues, I still think you should try.
iym's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
sofia_pinho's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
whitemocha's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
First 6/5 reads this yr😭
milo_biblio's review against another edition
5.0
Babel is an amazing book because it breaks down such a complex system and issue in a way that is clear to understand even when it’s riddled with words one has probably never even seen before.
R.F. Kuang, who I later learned was a translator (duh that makes so much sense), has this amazing talent of not just adding big words into this book to seem intellectual, but using those words in a way that moves the story along. Not only that, but she gives a history lesson on these very words, which, in my opinion, made everything hit differently. I’ve never felt like I was reading a book that was teaching me and captivating me all at the same time until this book. Never had I read a book where I actually looked forward to the footnotes.
“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.”
There was something enlightening if not beautiful, as a person of color, getting to see how racism has its claws in anything and everything, down to language itself. How barbaric and yet intricate it was. From the root of words down to how they were translated into another.
The magic system in this book was impeccable because even that was used as a tool that helped really drive the point of this book home. The magic system was also very intricately laced into the historical aspect of this book. There were times during this book that I forgot that magic was a component of this book. I think to some this would be off-putting, especially since this book is listed as a fantasy, but personally I think it speaks to the story as a whole that if you took the magic aspect out of it, most of the book would still make sense.
I could talk about the magic system at length, but this review will be about the tones of racism, because that’s the element of this book that felt like it had a vice grip on me. Racism is not a foreign concept to me, and yet this book showed it to me in a new and enticing way.
One of the things I loved so much about this book was the talk about how languages were dwindling, how they were all coming to a single head, and because of this Oxford had to seek out other languages to help. I loved the way Kuang had these men of Oxford constantly talking down about foreigners, how they were consistently called lazy and barbarians, all while showing their dependency on the language of people they kept degrading. Not just that, but also showing how that very language was beautiful, poetic, and complex. The reason translating these languages was hard was because of the complexity of the language itself. Yet, ironically, these men were so disillusioned by their own prejudices, they convinced themselves that the complexity of that language proved that they were better than its origins.
Kuang doesn’t just use language as a plot and tool, but she shows the depth that language truly has. She shows how it can change and bend and translate into something similar or completely different. I think part of what makes this book so great was that Kuang showed her knowledge in this subject as
“It would seem a great paradox, the fact that after everything they had told Letty, all the pain they had shared, she was the one who needed comfort.”
The characters of this book are so important to the theme of this book, but I specifically want to focus on Letty’s character in respect to the rest of the characters, for I feel without this character, the message isn’t as strong as it would’ve been.
This book has been pretty controversial within the white community because, let’s be honest, race makes one feel uncomfortable when someone who looks like you is casted a villain. To which I say, as a black woman, welcome to our world! When I was deep diving on Tik Tok I found that there were a couple of white readers who rated this book poorly for the simple fact that it made them uncomfortable. I find it interesting that the same way this book made people of color feel as if they could deeply relate to the majority of the cast of characters in this book, their white counterparts felt a sense of unease. That in itself speaks volumes.
Now back to the character Letty. She’s not a main character, but as I stated earlier, her presence was absolutely necessary. Not simply the fact that she was white, but the fact that she was female in the 1800’s really brought the theme together. Letty has never once stopped herself from painting herself as a victim in this book. She used the fact that she was financially cut off and the fact that she was a woman as a reason that she was on the same level as her friends, which is just entirely untrue. I also really appreciate the fact that Kuang added Victoire as a character, because every time Letty had something to say about the troubles of women I couldn’t help but think of Victoire, who was not only a woman but also black. Letty found it so easy to talk about the plights of being a woman and actually believed that Victoire only felt the effects of being black, rather than both. Which is not lost on me how it could show how Letty never fully saw Victoire as a person.
Letty desperately wanted to be a part of a group that she simply couldn’t be a part of, and I think that more than anything was her downfall. Rather than accepting that she couldn’t relate to her cohorts and just listening and offering her help, she took her difference as a rejection. Letty was constantly saying the one thing she couldn’t even accept herself: you were so blessed with these opportunities, why can’t you just be happy with that. This was something that could’ve easily been said to her, Letty was constantly stating the point she couldn’t grasp herself. To her, her friends were blessed, but oh that pesky race thing kept clouding their mind. Why wasn’t being rich and white enough for her, if that pesky female thing kept getting in the way.
Letty was if “I don’t see color” was personified. She fell for Ramy, an Indian man, and yet couldn’t understand how he couldn’t reciprocate those feelings. And quite honestly, I don’t think he ever felt anything for her anyways. This is just one very small example of how her own emotions always took precedence over the safety of the people she claimed to care so much about. This was the same woman that placed a bullet in this very same man, because he was too invested in helping people who were foreign just like him.
I don’t think it was just an accident that Letty gravitated to Robin, who after all, was half white. I think she believed that his “better half” would prevail. That because Robin was given these great opportunities and could pass as white under the right lighting, he was closer to her than anyone else. There is even a point in which Letty exclaims “But you aren’t your countrymen! You are the exception. You are the lucky one, the elevated. Or do you really find more in common with those poor fools in Canton than your fellow Oxfordians.” Victoire helped her commiserate about womanhood while Robin was the familiar white comfort she wanted.
“My point being, abolition happened because white people found reasons to care - whether those be economic or religious. You just have to make them think they came up with the idea themselves.”
In the part of the book where the quote above comes to play, Anthony explains how abolition didn’t come from the British suddenly finding humanity in black people. It was because within abolition they found a reason, other than human rights, to care. They found a reason that pertained to them.
This quote is shown through the character Abel. Abel is a veteran turned blue collar factory worker, and not only did the magic silver bars begin to take jobs, it also endangered the people that got to keep their jobs. Abel and his counterparts were against the silver bars not because of how they influenced colonization but because they were affecting his own community. The first interaction we see with Abel is him protesting outside the Babel tower and throwing eggs at Robin and his friends. But eventually Abel saw Robin and his cohorts starting to act against the Babel tower, and so he joined. Let’s not forget though that it was for an entirely different reason.
Abel is a key player in the Babel tower takeover at the end of the book. He helps build the barricades, supplies food and water and cots, and in the end helps get the necessary people out of the tower before Robin and the rest of babblers tear the tower down. In all of this, in all the ways he reached out a hand, not once did Abel say anything close to “what they’re doing to you and your people isn’t okay”. They were allied because the end result benefited them both, that was all. There was never an acknowledgment on how the silver bars themselves affected them differently.
In conclusion I find it incredibly ironic, and honestly comical, that there are white people who don’t like this book because it upsets them. When, in fact, it is some of the white characters that are great examples of how even white people with the best intentions simply don’t get it. It bothers them because these characters hit too close to home, because these characters are harder to spot and easier to identify with. In different forms of media there is often the obvious racist, and that’s the case in this book as well. Obviously racist professors who could care less about what happens to the people of color in this book, as long as they stay in line and serve them the way they were intended to. It’s easy to point out the white men who call foreigners barbarians or throw racist slurs at people. It’s easy to point at the people in white hoods and say “Look! I’m not that guy!”. But it’s a lot less easy to see yourself in these characters that are also the villain. Misunderstandings are a lot harder to justify when you read how those misunderstandings are actually harmful and have consequences.
This book gets five stars for me across the board. I was never bored and always anticipating what would happen next. I love a book that gets my heart racing, and this book never stopped being that.
R.F. Kuang, who I later learned was a translator (duh that makes so much sense), has this amazing talent of not just adding big words into this book to seem intellectual, but using those words in a way that moves the story along. Not only that, but she gives a history lesson on these very words, which, in my opinion, made everything hit differently. I’ve never felt like I was reading a book that was teaching me and captivating me all at the same time until this book. Never had I read a book where I actually looked forward to the footnotes.
“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.”
There was something enlightening if not beautiful, as a person of color, getting to see how racism has its claws in anything and everything, down to language itself. How barbaric and yet intricate it was. From the root of words down to how they were translated into another.
The magic system in this book was impeccable because even that was used as a tool that helped really drive the point of this book home. The magic system was also very intricately laced into the historical aspect of this book. There were times during this book that I forgot that magic was a component of this book. I think to some this would be off-putting, especially since this book is listed as a fantasy, but personally I think it speaks to the story as a whole that if you took the magic aspect out of it, most of the book would still make sense.
I could talk about the magic system at length, but this review will be about the tones of racism, because that’s the element of this book that felt like it had a vice grip on me. Racism is not a foreign concept to me, and yet this book showed it to me in a new and enticing way.
One of the things I loved so much about this book was the talk about how languages were dwindling, how they were all coming to a single head, and because of this Oxford had to seek out other languages to help. I loved the way Kuang had these men of Oxford constantly talking down about foreigners, how they were consistently called lazy and barbarians, all while showing their dependency on the language of people they kept degrading. Not just that, but also showing how that very language was beautiful, poetic, and complex. The reason translating these languages was hard was because of the complexity of the language itself. Yet, ironically, these men were so disillusioned by their own prejudices, they convinced themselves that the complexity of that language proved that they were better than its origins.
Kuang doesn’t just use language as a plot and tool, but she shows the depth that language truly has. She shows how it can change and bend and translate into something similar or completely different. I think part of what makes this book so great was that Kuang showed her knowledge in this subject as
“It would seem a great paradox, the fact that after everything they had told Letty, all the pain they had shared, she was the one who needed comfort.”
The characters of this book are so important to the theme of this book, but I specifically want to focus on Letty’s character in respect to the rest of the characters, for I feel without this character, the message isn’t as strong as it would’ve been.
This book has been pretty controversial within the white community because, let’s be honest, race makes one feel uncomfortable when someone who looks like you is casted a villain. To which I say, as a black woman, welcome to our world! When I was deep diving on Tik Tok I found that there were a couple of white readers who rated this book poorly for the simple fact that it made them uncomfortable. I find it interesting that the same way this book made people of color feel as if they could deeply relate to the majority of the cast of characters in this book, their white counterparts felt a sense of unease. That in itself speaks volumes.
Now back to the character Letty. She’s not a main character, but as I stated earlier, her presence was absolutely necessary. Not simply the fact that she was white, but the fact that she was female in the 1800’s really brought the theme together. Letty has never once stopped herself from painting herself as a victim in this book. She used the fact that she was financially cut off and the fact that she was a woman as a reason that she was on the same level as her friends, which is just entirely untrue. I also really appreciate the fact that Kuang added Victoire as a character, because every time Letty had something to say about the troubles of women I couldn’t help but think of Victoire, who was not only a woman but also black. Letty found it so easy to talk about the plights of being a woman and actually believed that Victoire only felt the effects of being black, rather than both. Which is not lost on me how it could show how Letty never fully saw Victoire as a person.
Letty desperately wanted to be a part of a group that she simply couldn’t be a part of, and I think that more than anything was her downfall. Rather than accepting that she couldn’t relate to her cohorts and just listening and offering her help, she took her difference as a rejection. Letty was constantly saying the one thing she couldn’t even accept herself: you were so blessed with these opportunities, why can’t you just be happy with that. This was something that could’ve easily been said to her, Letty was constantly stating the point she couldn’t grasp herself. To her, her friends were blessed, but oh that pesky race thing kept clouding their mind. Why wasn’t being rich and white enough for her, if that pesky female thing kept getting in the way.
Letty was if “I don’t see color” was personified. She fell for Ramy, an Indian man, and yet couldn’t understand how he couldn’t reciprocate those feelings. And quite honestly, I don’t think he ever felt anything for her anyways. This is just one very small example of how her own emotions always took precedence over the safety of the people she claimed to care so much about. This was the same woman that placed a bullet in this very same man, because he was too invested in helping people who were foreign just like him.
I don’t think it was just an accident that Letty gravitated to Robin, who after all, was half white. I think she believed that his “better half” would prevail. That because Robin was given these great opportunities and could pass as white under the right lighting, he was closer to her than anyone else. There is even a point in which Letty exclaims “But you aren’t your countrymen! You are the exception. You are the lucky one, the elevated. Or do you really find more in common with those poor fools in Canton than your fellow Oxfordians.” Victoire helped her commiserate about womanhood while Robin was the familiar white comfort she wanted.
“My point being, abolition happened because white people found reasons to care - whether those be economic or religious. You just have to make them think they came up with the idea themselves.”
In the part of the book where the quote above comes to play, Anthony explains how abolition didn’t come from the British suddenly finding humanity in black people. It was because within abolition they found a reason, other than human rights, to care. They found a reason that pertained to them.
This quote is shown through the character Abel. Abel is a veteran turned blue collar factory worker, and not only did the magic silver bars begin to take jobs, it also endangered the people that got to keep their jobs. Abel and his counterparts were against the silver bars not because of how they influenced colonization but because they were affecting his own community. The first interaction we see with Abel is him protesting outside the Babel tower and throwing eggs at Robin and his friends. But eventually Abel saw Robin and his cohorts starting to act against the Babel tower, and so he joined. Let’s not forget though that it was for an entirely different reason.
Abel is a key player in the Babel tower takeover at the end of the book. He helps build the barricades, supplies food and water and cots, and in the end helps get the necessary people out of the tower before Robin and the rest of babblers tear the tower down. In all of this, in all the ways he reached out a hand, not once did Abel say anything close to “what they’re doing to you and your people isn’t okay”. They were allied because the end result benefited them both, that was all. There was never an acknowledgment on how the silver bars themselves affected them differently.
In conclusion I find it incredibly ironic, and honestly comical, that there are white people who don’t like this book because it upsets them. When, in fact, it is some of the white characters that are great examples of how even white people with the best intentions simply don’t get it. It bothers them because these characters hit too close to home, because these characters are harder to spot and easier to identify with. In different forms of media there is often the obvious racist, and that’s the case in this book as well. Obviously racist professors who could care less about what happens to the people of color in this book, as long as they stay in line and serve them the way they were intended to. It’s easy to point out the white men who call foreigners barbarians or throw racist slurs at people. It’s easy to point at the people in white hoods and say “Look! I’m not that guy!”. But it’s a lot less easy to see yourself in these characters that are also the villain. Misunderstandings are a lot harder to justify when you read how those misunderstandings are actually harmful and have consequences.
This book gets five stars for me across the board. I was never bored and always anticipating what would happen next. I love a book that gets my heart racing, and this book never stopped being that.
elisavo's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-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
beclaur's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
tense
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.5
christofd's review against another edition
5.0
5/5
I love the characters and the story.
I hate the characters and the story.
I love the ending.
I hate the ending.
A truly profound book.
I love the characters and the story.
I hate the characters and the story.
I love the ending.
I hate the ending.
A truly profound book.