Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution: book review

Title: Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution.

Release date: August 23rd, 2022

Publisher: Harper Voyager

Pages: 560

My rating: 5/5

Synopsis:

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he'll enroll in Oxford University's prestigious Royal Institute of Translation — also known as Babel.

Babel is the world's center of translation and, more importantly, of silver-working: the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation through enchanted silver bars, to magical effect. Silver-working has made the British Empire unparalleled in power, and Babel's research in foreign languages serves the Empire's quest to colonize everything it encounters.

Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, is a fairytale for Robin; a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge serves power, and for Robin, a Chinese boy raised in Britain, serving Babel inevitably means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to sabotaging the silver-working that supports imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide: Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence? What is he willing to sacrifice to bring Babel down?

Babel — a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal response to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell — grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of translation as a tool of empire.

(ARC provided by HarperVoyager)

Welcome back readers,

I can't lie. I was afraid both of finishing this novel and writing a review. I wasn't prepared for the emotional damage it would provoke me and I'm still feeling too devastated to properly write something significant, something wonderful, something appropriate for the masterpiece I'm going to review. But I came to a conclusion: I will never be able to recover from Babel. I will never be able to live my life as I did before reading such a book steeped in history, in truth.

Firstly, I want to thank the publishers and the author for granting me this advanced reading copy, it has been a great honor to read it before its release and witness the astonishing talent of R.F. Kuang. As a fan of The Poppy War, I couldn't let this opportunity slip through my hands.

Babel is dark academia, but I think it's too reductive, it doesn't properly summarize what Babel represents, and it doesn't express the countless research the author did to write this book. It's a book about the worth of language, translation, cultures, history, and the truth that surrounds it, even if it may be dark and sad. If you love languages, this book has the power to make you too dwell on the provenance of words, their previous meaning, and their histories. I can’t deny it has been difficult, understating certain concepts has been a challenge, but it all was worth it.

All the countless topics denounced by the author did make the book a must-read for anyone. Literally, anyone should read and learn from it. It's a book that raises awareness about racism, sexism, colonialism, white privilege, and many other things just like the workers' conditions during the 1830s. A great part of those sensitive subjects can easily be referred to the world right now because even though people think that acceptance and equality have been completely achieved that’s not entirely true. The author has done an amazing job especially on this field, such important issues can’t be expressed lightly. What we read are not only fruit of research, but also of experience. Kuang combines fantasy and awareness in the finest way and that’s what I always want from a book.

Babel narrates the story of Robin Swift from his point of view. We follow Robin since his childhood, since the worst moment of his life: his mother is dying of cholera and he was about to follow her soon when a strange white man arrives in the house with a peculiar silver bar that instantly saves him. We're in 1828, that's when everything begins. His so-called savior is named Professor Lovell and he has a proposal: accept his offer and remain under his wing to become a proper Englishman, giving up his roots and following him through a path of knowledge that would have led him to Oxford; or remain in Canton, alone and without food or water and with no one to rely on. The choice seems simple, yet it is when Robin cuts ties with his culture, his motherland, and who he once used to be. The first act is choosing an English name, forgetting the one his mother gave, the one he had grown up with. So, he becomes Robin Swift.

After reaching Britain's shores, he starts his classes in Ancient Greek, Latin, and Mandarin. In Professor Lovell's estate, Robin learns how fragile his ties with that new world are and how much he wants to preserve them. He knows where he will go after having learned everything he needs: Oxford is the center of translation, it is where the art of silver-working happens and where all England's riches reside. Oxford instructs students from all over the word in order to exploit their talent and their mother-tongues to enlarge the Empire.

That's where we start understanding Kuang's magic system in this book. It feels so close to us, so similar to simple improvements in technology, environment, etc... that I dare to call it magic realism. But what are those silver bars? How do they work? They're pieces of silvers engraved with match-pairs and usually one is an English word and the other comes from a foreign language. Why are they so important to the Empire? Because they make Britain stronger, they empower those who pull the strings and help them conquer whoever gets in their path.

In this world, knowledge is the energy that keeps the world moving and those who have all the power would do anything to gain more and more strength. They would strip children from their homes, and their cultures, erasing everything that isn't considered proper English. That's what happened to Robin: he's a means to an end only.

Robin lives his best life at Oxford, not only because he has everything someone could desire, but also because he's not alone. Ramy is the first he met. Ramy is a breath of fresh air, he's funny, cunning, clever, and beautiful. A Calcutta-born boy who left his family to follow his Master. His story matches Robin's, so our protagonist doesn't feel alone anymore, Robin finally understands that there are other people whose stories are like their own.

The other two main characters arrive shortly after. The cohort is composed of four students: Robin, Ramy, Victoire, and Letty. They're Robin's world, they transform Oxford into a place that could be addressed as home. He's not alone, none of them are alone. The four of them bask in the tranquility and calmness of a normal life, they clung to it with their claws, not brave enough to really look at the world, at the truth behind the glitz Oxford gave them. Even though manipulated, even though with their eyes shut, they loved the life they were leading.

The Hermes Society and Robin's fight against what's really good and what's not started quickly and that's how we enter into Robin's mind, that's how we understand how Robin watches the world around him, how he bends his head when the truth is too harsh. But hatred could be festered even without realizing it. He didn't understand what was at stake at first, but looking at the reality outside his soap bubble is enough to change his mind.

Griffin was a peculiar character till the end. I would have loved to learn more about his story, he was such a good morally grey character and his characterisation— even though only through few pages— was extremely credible.

Babel is a standalone book, but the characters' development is well-written and deepened until we know them as if they were our friends as if we become part of the cohort. Robin has conquered my heart page after page until the only thing I wanted was to protect him. He grows so much from the first page to the last, he seems quite another person but his evolution isn't forced, it's as reliable as it should have been.

Ramy and Victoire were my personal favorites (obviously after Robin), I loved their stories and their characters. Even though they don't have povs in the book, they're multi-facets, detailed, and reliable just like Letty obviously, the only British girl in our cohort. As I said before, Ramy comes from Calcutta, while Victoire comes from Haiti. The first has still a family to write to, and the other is an orphan just like Robin. Victoire is such a strong woman, she’s strongly attached to life and I loved reading the interlude from her perspective. On the other hand, Ramy, brilliant Ramy. What will forever remain in my heart is the relationship between the two of them, their bond is so pure and true. That’s how friendship should look like.

Letty has a bizarre story. The second-born girl from an important family in Brighton, she’s far more intelligent and willing to learn than her older brother. But her father doesn’t believe in women’s education, so he relies all his hopes on Lincoln, the first born, who hate all the opportunities life gave him. I will not say more about her because it’s a character that will be discovered page after page and you readers have to be as shocked as I was…

The end and what has unleashed it put me to the test. I can't say I didn't expect certain things, some choices made by the author were almost signaled during the reading as if trying to warn the reader of what would happen at the end. But it was its brutality that caught me off guard. After reading The Poppy War I knew that the author's way of writing was... explicit to a point that made everything real, but somehow in Babel, it wasn't the way of describing things in particular, but the character's psyche to crush my heart completely. In Babel we have another kind of brutality: we have many more human emotions that have filled the frame. The characters' reactions were reliable and understandable and so were their acts.

I know this is a standalone, but it would be wonderful to have a companion novel about Victoire.

I can't believe to have finished this journey, I wanted it to last more, I wanted to stay some more time with my characters, my friends, but I have to let them go. Babel has become my comfort novel. I'm a 22-year-old Italian girl, and yet I've grown a lot while reading it. I've also felt extremely angry during a great part of it, not even the beginning of Robin's adventure was slow and calm, it violently crushed my happiness in a way only great books can do.

In the end, there are a lot of other things I wanted to say, but I really don't want to spoil anything. This book has to be a puzzle to you as it was for me, it must mess you up as it did with me. Babel is a real masterpiece of our time, I hope it will reach as many people as possible.