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A review by the_bookishmum
Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
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? It's complicated
5.0
Thank you NetGalley and Harper Collins Audio for access to the audiobook in exchange for a fair and honest review.
This book is my first experience of R.F Kuang’s writing and the narrator Chris Lew Kum Hoi gave it the gravitas, atmospheric beauty, sensitivity and raw emotion that the prose deserved.
Babel is not a book for the faint of heart, the topics it deals with are heart wrenching. It unflinchingly holds up a mirror to our own society and says ‘can you not see that this is how the world still works, that society is still this broken’. It is written as an alternative history, set in a time when the romantics such as Shelley were favoured and only white European men were permitted to study in the likes of Oxford and Cambridge. It is written in a way that resembles the prose of Oscar Wilde. It is here in this world we are confronted with the upbringing of Robin Swift, a boy stolen from his home in Canton, China, and brought to England under the guise of being ‘saved’ from the ‘barbarism’ of his home town (we later learn but always really know that this is a lie constructed by his guardian for his own gain). By Robin’s side we experience the heartbreak of the loss of oneself, the way his own natural language of Cantonese becomes a stranger to him even though he still dreams in the language. He is moulded into the perfect language scholar, beaten for attempting to read and enjoy fiction. Robin’s story is sadly not an unusual one, a child taken in the name of colonisation, ‘educated’ to the point of losing who he is and then used against his own people, set around the time of the opium wars in China. Robin falls in love with the idea of Oxford college, the romance of it all. He finds friendship with the other Babel scholars and for a while is shielded from the othering he will later feel at the hands of other Oxford scholars who very much feel that Robin and his cohort do not belong.
The characters and emotions were so raw and real,
Now for the fantasy side of this book. The power of language is explored heavily in this book, words and silver are the most important things within this society. The silver working represents the very real industrial revolution. The students of Babel are there only because they are masters in their own language, their ability to translate to English from their native tongues is one that gives the silver more power and it can therefore be used in the same way a spell would be used. The magic was well thought out and at times dark and visceral.
Babel is about friendship, betrayal and the effects of colonialism on the colonised. It is about resistance and the plight of the working man vs the oppressive regime that seeks only to better itself riding on the backs of the downtrodden. It is about how the world we live in would not exist if it were not stolen. It is about the power of language and the way it can be used in both resistance and oppression with similar strength. It is beautiful, raw and heartbreaking.
This book is my first experience of R.F Kuang’s writing and the narrator Chris Lew Kum Hoi gave it the gravitas, atmospheric beauty, sensitivity and raw emotion that the prose deserved.
Babel is not a book for the faint of heart, the topics it deals with are heart wrenching. It unflinchingly holds up a mirror to our own society and says ‘can you not see that this is how the world still works, that society is still this broken’. It is written as an alternative history, set in a time when the romantics such as Shelley were favoured and only white European men were permitted to study in the likes of Oxford and Cambridge. It is written in a way that resembles the prose of Oscar Wilde. It is here in this world we are confronted with the upbringing of Robin Swift, a boy stolen from his home in Canton, China, and brought to England under the guise of being ‘saved’ from the ‘barbarism’ of his home town (we later learn but always really know that this is a lie constructed by his guardian for his own gain). By Robin’s side we experience the heartbreak of the loss of oneself, the way his own natural language of Cantonese becomes a stranger to him even though he still dreams in the language. He is moulded into the perfect language scholar, beaten for attempting to read and enjoy fiction. Robin’s story is sadly not an unusual one, a child taken in the name of colonisation, ‘educated’ to the point of losing who he is and then used against his own people, set around the time of the opium wars in China. Robin falls in love with the idea of Oxford college, the romance of it all. He finds friendship with the other Babel scholars and for a while is shielded from the othering he will later feel at the hands of other Oxford scholars who very much feel that Robin and his cohort do not belong.
The characters and emotions were so raw and real,
Now for the fantasy side of this book. The power of language is explored heavily in this book, words and silver are the most important things within this society. The silver working represents the very real industrial revolution. The students of Babel are there only because they are masters in their own language, their ability to translate to English from their native tongues is one that gives the silver more power and it can therefore be used in the same way a spell would be used. The magic was well thought out and at times dark and visceral.
Babel is about friendship, betrayal and the effects of colonialism on the colonised. It is about resistance and the plight of the working man vs the oppressive regime that seeks only to better itself riding on the backs of the downtrodden. It is about how the world we live in would not exist if it were not stolen. It is about the power of language and the way it can be used in both resistance and oppression with similar strength. It is beautiful, raw and heartbreaking.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Colonisation, Death, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Grief, Hate crime, Islamophobia, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Racism, Slavery, Torture, Toxic friendship, War, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Classism, Deportation, Drug use, Gaslighting, and Injury/Injury detail