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A review by themermaddie
Babel by R.F. Kuang
5.0
i've been putting off writing this review since i finished it a while ago because i don't know where to even start. i know i have a flair for the dramatic, but i am being so fr rn when i say this book changed my life. heart-wrenching, wickedly smart, and chock full of casually devastating lines: babel has altered my brain chemistry. there is so much here to talk about and words don't seem like enough, yet babel tells me words are sometimes all we have, so i will try.
we follow robin swift as he is whisked away to england after cholera sweeps through his home in canton, being raised as an englishman and a linguist so that he can attend Babel, oxford's institute of translation. there, alongside other poc who were also brought to england, he learns to use languages to wield the magic found in silver in service of the british colonial empire. this book asks us to confront class and privilege, especially as people of colour living in the west; if translation is always an act of betrayal, how much of our personhood are we willing to sacrifice to maintain the daily comforts of our status quo? what do we do when the coloniser refuses to acknowledge our humanity but demands our culture and our labour to function? this book is a slow coming to terms with an inevitable revolution. it's set in the 1800s, yet the themes of this book could not be more relevant to the present day.
kuang's writing is beautiful, and she's clearly so incredibly smart; the entire book is filled with an obvious love for academia and linguistics, and the depths to which she's researched all the different languages and etymologies is truly so impressive. this book is so steeped in themes of cultural loss and betrayal, and it's just a constant undercurrent of wrongness and displacement; it's the feeling of pride in being valued as a translator, before the bottom drops out from underneath, and you realise they only see you as a cog in the machine of their empire, a vessel empty of humanity they can fill with their greed. when they're surrounded by all the opulence and privilege of oxford, it's so easy to see how any of the poc babel scholars might come to rely on those comforts, and be reluctant to oppose colonialism. after all, haven't they been gifted this great privilege? hasnt oxford provided everything for them? don't worry about the constant racism and reminders that they won't ever be truly english, or that they can never return to their homelands, why aren't they eternally grateful to the english for enlightening them out of destitution and the inhumanity of being nonwhite?
this book gives words to feelings i've never known how to express, the cultural trauma of immigration and the conflict of diaspora identities, and decolonising my own mind. it's so unbelievable to me that this book can be so many things at once; painful, like looking straight into the sun, as it forces me to confront the ugly truth of colonialism, but also a balm, as each of robin's revelations feel like catharsis. it's fiercely political and intense, yet also full of tender sweetness, those rare moments in the early days of human connection that make up the little joys in life. it's at once devastating and invigorating, a call to arms.
i don't even know if any of this is making sense, but basically i read babel and now i don't know how to act. by far the best book i've read all year, if not ever. this was so formative. if you only read one book this year, let it be this one.
we follow robin swift as he is whisked away to england after cholera sweeps through his home in canton, being raised as an englishman and a linguist so that he can attend Babel, oxford's institute of translation. there, alongside other poc who were also brought to england, he learns to use languages to wield the magic found in silver in service of the british colonial empire. this book asks us to confront class and privilege, especially as people of colour living in the west; if translation is always an act of betrayal, how much of our personhood are we willing to sacrifice to maintain the daily comforts of our status quo? what do we do when the coloniser refuses to acknowledge our humanity but demands our culture and our labour to function? this book is a slow coming to terms with an inevitable revolution. it's set in the 1800s, yet the themes of this book could not be more relevant to the present day.
kuang's writing is beautiful, and she's clearly so incredibly smart; the entire book is filled with an obvious love for academia and linguistics, and the depths to which she's researched all the different languages and etymologies is truly so impressive. this book is so steeped in themes of cultural loss and betrayal, and it's just a constant undercurrent of wrongness and displacement; it's the feeling of pride in being valued as a translator, before the bottom drops out from underneath, and you realise they only see you as a cog in the machine of their empire, a vessel empty of humanity they can fill with their greed. when they're surrounded by all the opulence and privilege of oxford, it's so easy to see how any of the poc babel scholars might come to rely on those comforts, and be reluctant to oppose colonialism. after all, haven't they been gifted this great privilege? hasnt oxford provided everything for them? don't worry about the constant racism and reminders that they won't ever be truly english, or that they can never return to their homelands, why aren't they eternally grateful to the english for enlightening them out of destitution and the inhumanity of being nonwhite?
this book gives words to feelings i've never known how to express, the cultural trauma of immigration and the conflict of diaspora identities, and decolonising my own mind. it's so unbelievable to me that this book can be so many things at once; painful, like looking straight into the sun, as it forces me to confront the ugly truth of colonialism, but also a balm, as each of robin's revelations feel like catharsis. it's fiercely political and intense, yet also full of tender sweetness, those rare moments in the early days of human connection that make up the little joys in life. it's at once devastating and invigorating, a call to arms.
i don't even know if any of this is making sense, but basically i read babel and now i don't know how to act. by far the best book i've read all year, if not ever. this was so formative. if you only read one book this year, let it be this one.