Babel: The SUNDAY TIMES and #1 NEW YORK TIMES bestseller Paperback – 28 Sept. 2023

‘Babel Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution’ is an alternative history/fantasy by R.F. Kuang.I complemented my reading with its unabridged audiobook edition, allowing for an immersive experience. The audiobook was narrated by Chris Lew Kum Hoi and Billie Fulford-Brown.What an extraordinary novel! As I have been disappointed by a few highly anticipated fantasy novels this year, I approached ‘Babel’ with caution. However, right from its opening pages I found myself enthralled and completely caught up in its story, characters, and setting.Having previously read Kuang’s ‘The Poppy War’ trilogy I probably should have had more faith as I had been impressed by her writing and skilful blend of history and fantasy.‘Babel’ is a substantial novel in size and complex in its subject matter. As such it is difficult to summarise, so just a few details for context.Oxford, 1836. In this alternative Victorian Britain, the city of dreaming spires is the nexus point of all knowledge and progress in the world. At its centre is Babel, the Royal Institute of Translation, the tower from which all the power of the Empire flows. Magic associated with enchanted silver has provided the foundation for the growth of the British Empire. Yet at what price?As a young boy Robin Swift had been orphaned in Canton and brought to Britain by Professor Lovell, who takes on the role of guardian, albeit a stern one. Initially Robin receives private instruction in a variety of subjects, including languages, until he is ready to be admitted to Babel. There he bonds with a small group of his fellow ‘Babblers’. He inadvertently stumbles across a secret society and after learning of their goals agrees to aid them. Yet there are conflicting factors that will, as the full title indicates, eventually bring about a revolution.With ‘Babel’ R.F. Kuang has written a powerful historical fantasy that unflinchingly addresses issues linked to colonialism and racism. It is bold yet sublime. I found her world building detailed and immaculate as its various aspects emerged organically.With respect to the audiobook, I felt that both narrators were excellent. Chris Lew Kum Hoi served as the main reader and I felt that he brought a great deal of energy to his narration. The footnotes that appear in the text were read by Billie Fulford-Brown. I found that hearing a different voice helped with the narrative flow between the central story and the footnotes that served to expand on various points in this fictional history.Overall, I feel that ‘Babel’ is a masterpiece, a scholarly work of dark academia that boldly addresses the legacy of history. Without doubt ‘Babel’ is one of my top novels for 2022.Very highly recommended.

Set in the early 1800s, Robin Swift is brought to London by Professor Lovell to train in Latin and Greek and eventually attend Oxford University, where he will be a ‘Babler’ after being orphaned by cholera in Canton. Bablers study languages at the University Institute of Translation, aka Babel. Here, there is a special type of silverwork done whereby silver bars are produced and on one side is a word is engraved in one language, and on the other side of the bar is a translation of that word in English. When these words are spoken, the bar enables certain things to happen which would not be possible otherwise – this is the magic element. For example, maybe a silver bar makes horses tire less easily, or steam engines require less fuel to keep running at high speed. Perhaps the right words can make the bearer invisible, and perhaps the right words can kill. However, not just anyone can use these bars. To activate them, the speaker must be more than fluent in both the languages inscribed on the bar – they must think and dream in both languages. I do like that the magic system here is entirely unique. Also I love the whole power of words angle.There were parts of this book where the pacing was terrible. Having noticed this as somewhat of a trend with this author, I can not help but feel like what she is trying to achieve is that sense of time being unfixed for the reader. You know, how sometimes time can drag and an hour can feel like a month, and other times you blink and the day is gone. I feel like more practice is needed with this though because as things stand, it can make a pretty jarring reading experience at times. It would have been great if, in those slower moments, we could have had more development of the relationships between Robin and his friends, build on the chemistry more, and make the ups and downs of their friendships matter more by showing us how and why they mean so much to each other, rather than just telling us that they all love one another. In fact, there is quite a lot of telling rather than showing in this book, in a way that at times feels quite condescending and it irritated me because, your readers are either able to understand the literary terms you are using and as such do not need basic things explaining to them like this – or they do not, in which case the technical terms kind of feels like the author is just showing off about all the big words that she knows. And Oh My Gawd the footnotes! The freaking footnotes in this book!!! I would advise reading on Kindle as it’s easy to hover and read the footnotes without having to physically flip through pages. Some might be fine doing that with a physical copy, I just know it would have infuriated me even further. At best R.F. Kuang is trying to make her book readable for everyone, but in doing this she massively misses the mark for any specific target audience.That being said, I did like the characters, I thought that they were really interesting and showed a lot of promise, which is why I wanted more from them and more tension and chemistry between them all. I also loved the tension over the Hermes Society and knowing that eventually Robin would get caught as he is a terrible liar. That being said there is a good section of the book from this one scene before they have this excursion to China and when they return to Oxford that felt like it could have just been completely cut from the book.I loved the premise of the plot for this book. I guess I would agree that translation is an act of theft because translators have to make this choice when translating a text from one language to another. They can do it word for word and possibly lose the meaning and not have it make grammatical sense in the translation; or they can focus on keeping the story and the message the same, even if they have to say it differently. As such, there will always be losses in translation.I did not see the end coming. There is an act of betrayal that blind-sighted me more than it possibly should have upon reflection, and there is a loss that I found sad, although I’d have been much more aggrieved by this if relationships throughout the entire book had been better written. However, the ending was pretty perfect. In fact, the entire section that builds up to that ending is fantastic and I can’t be critical about it because I just don’t see any other way it could have or should have been done. It was fantastically delivered.Overall, it feels like R.F.Kuang excels when writing about etymology, war and history because these are her comfort zones. Where she is terrible at writing is chemistry and relationships and I would love these areas to be tackled, perhaps she could do some writing exercises to practice this because if she got this down, as an author she would be absolutely stratospheric.Overall, I did enjoy reading this book – yes it took quite a bit longer than expected to read – mostly because of the pacing – I ended up taking a break in the middle and reading something else – but I did enjoy the book. It’s probably not a re-read for me, and I am glad it’s a standalone. This book scored a 7/10 for me on CAWPILE, which means it does just scrape in at the 4 stars although, if I’m honest it’s probably more of a 3.5 for the whole book, but, I allowed for the 4-star rating because of the ending and the action surrounding the ending.