Theo Bennett★ Reader · Lv 2
todayFurious, footnoted, and unforgettable. It made me feel the violence of translation and empire at once.
Fantasy
Babel
by R.F. Kuang
4.7· 502 ratings
Published 2022569 pagesEnglishErudite · Furious
That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they're trying to say.
Why read it
An orphan is plucked from cholera-stricken Canton and raised to serve Oxford's Royal Institute of Translation, where silver bars inscribed with words in two languages power the British Empire, until he learns the price his own people pay for that magic.
The premise
Kuang builds a dark academia fantasy set in an alternate 1830s Oxford, where translation itself is the engine of empire and colonial extraction. It follows a Chinese-born scholar torn between the institution that made him and a secret society fighting to bring it down, asking whether violence is ever justified against systems of power.
The story behind it
Published in 2022, its full title is Babel, or the Necessity of Violence. A number one New York Times bestseller, it won the 2023 Nebula Award and the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, drawing on Kuang's own background in translation studies.
What awaits inside
- 01
Translation as power
What awaits is a world where the gap between two words, captured in silver, literally fuels an empire.
- 02
The scholar's complicity
Robin thrives inside a system that exploits the very homelands its students come from.
- 03
The cost of resistance
The Hermes Society forces the question the subtitle poses, whether change can come without violence.
- 04
Belonging and betrayal
Friendship, loyalty, and racial identity fracture as loyalties are tested.
From the book
Robin's clandestine work with the Hermes Society, smuggling silver and knowledge out of the tower.
The escalating standoff at Babel, where the students seize the tower to strike at the empire's heart.
4.7
502 ratings
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