Book Review: Babel

Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution
Written by R. F. Kuang in 2022

Synopsis: Robin Swift is a Chinese orphan rescued by Oxford professor Richard Lovell and molded into Lovell’s language prodigy in order to enroll at the Royal Institute of Translation. Here Robin and his classmates learn the art of silverworking, enchanting silver bars for a variety of magical effects by inscribing them with matching words from different languages. When Robin realizes that this magic technology will be used to extort his homeland, he must decide where his ethics and allegiance lie.

Review: To misquote the esteemed Dr. Doofenshmirtz, if I had a nickel for every time I read a book wherein a friend group of Classics students need to cover up a murder, I would have two nickels—which isn’t a lot, but it’s strange that it happened twice. Babel, however, outshines The Secret History, and its higher stakes lead to more (and more meaningful) violence.

Babel focuses mostly on Robin but fleshes out his three classmates as main characters with their own backstory chapters. Kuang wields the ensemble cast exceptionally, illuminating each of their decisions as jointly informed by their own struggles and the influence of their friends. With each student coming from a different ethnic and cultural background, the cast builds solidarity from the discrimination they all face in 1830s England, but remain unable to completely understand each other’s experiences. The plot naturally flows from the people, as opposed to being an externally imposed fantasy threat, and I’ll remember these characters as strongly as if I attended Oxford with them.

I was commanded to read Babel by my peers because of its linguistics-based magic. Unfortunately, Kuang’s silverworking loses all the cinematic glory the author created in the Poppy War trilogy. The fact that each bar utilizes different words means every single usage of magic requires a character to explain exactly how it works, which cripples every action scene and makes the reader’s understanding lag behind the characters’.

This density worsens with the academic structure of Babel, as hinted at by the long title. Kuang includes footnotes, half with true history and half specific to this world. These add little to the plot and instead only hammer in Kuang’s anti-imperialist views. The story shows England’s exploitation of non-Western nations and the complicity of academia in power structures plenty fine, and stating it outright, repeatedly, on top of that will likely alienate moderate readers rather than widen their perspective on history.

Strengths:

• The painfully strained relationship between Robin and Lovell, and its eventual catharsis, is a gripping throughline of the novel.

• The ending could have been cheesy in another author’s hands, but Kuang fleshes out the symbolism with a captivating, drawn-out siege.

Weaknesses:

• Victoire’s ending seems like it is meant to be cautiously optimistic, but the actual circumstances laid out suggest it can only go horribly wrong.

Rating: 17/20 magical cures with planned obsolescence

Ideal Setting: Read this when you next find yourself drawing on a foreign expression to say something that English doesn’t quite capture.