Babel by R. F Kuang
Kindle & Audible: US or CA
Morning All & Happy Tuesday!!
I hope you all had a great weekend and are loving this start to fall! One of my most anticipated releases this month was Katabasis by R. F Kuang and while I have yet to knock it off my TBR I did manage to pick up Babel, and ooooh, she was chunky!
Set in 1830s Oxford, Babel follows Robin Swift, a Chinese boy orphaned by sickness and brought to England by the mysterious Professor Lovell. Raised to master languages, Robin is eventually enrolled at Oxford’s Royal Institute of Translation—nicknamed “Babel.” The Institute wields translation and silver-working, a form of magical craftsmanship, to fuel the British Empire’s power and expansion.
As Robin grows into his role at Babel, he’s forced to confront the cost of the empire’s dominance and his complicity within it. When he discovers a secret society resisting Babel’s control and its colonialist ties, he must choose between loyalty to the institution that gave him a home and solidarity with those fighting for justice.
I LOVE when a book carries underlying messages and challenges the reader to think about their world perspective. This book has so many lessons, both linguistic and life, and so much depth that it almost needs to be read as a physical book.
Quote:
The English made regular use of only two flavors- salty and not salty- and did not seem to recognize any of the others. For a country that profited so well from trading in spices, its citizens were violently averse to actually using them
More specifically, the stuff of language that words are incapable of expressing- the stuff that gets lost when we move between one language and another. The silver catches what’s lost and manifests it into being.
In England it was impossible to avoid. But it was one thing to know the bars could work, that silver-work was simply the foundation of a functioning, advanced society. It was another thing to witness with their own eyes the warping of reality, the way words seized what no words could describe and invoked a physical effect that should not be.
Translation out, we think, as far as possible, to be a pure, impalpable, and invisible element, the medium of thought and feeling, and nothing more. But what do we know of thought and feeling except as expressed through language?”
“But language,” said Professor Lovell, “is not like a commercial good, like tea or silks, to be bought and paid for. Lanuage is an infinite resource. And if we learn it, if we use it- who are we stealing from?”
Either the translator leaves the author in peace and moves the reader toward him.; or he leaves the reader in peace and moves the author towards him…now is the later- to make translations sound so natural to the English reader that they do not read as translations at all… Do we try our hardest, as translators, to render outselves invisible? Or do we remind our reader that what they are reading was not written in their native language?
Silver powered machines of the kind William Blake dubbed ‘dark satanic mills’ were rapidly replacing artisanal labor, but rather than bringing prosperity ot all, they had instead created an economic recession, had caused a widening gap between the rich and poor that would seen become the stuff of novels by Disraeli and Dickens.
Strikers in this country never won broad public support, for the public merely wanted all the conveniences of modern life without the guilt of knowing how those conveniences were procured.
I supposed I just don’t like thinking of us as history when we haven’t even yet made a mark on the present
It just scares me…I don’t want this to be all we ever were.
“I’m sorry.” Letty sniffled between sobs. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”…it did feel cathartic, seeing her break down like this, knowing that at last she understood how they all felt. It was a relief to see that in her they still had an ally. Still, something did not seem right, and Robin could tell from Victoire’s and Ramy’s faces that they thought so too. …it would seem a great paradox, the fact that after everything they had told Letty, all the pain they had shared, she was the one who needed comfort.
Don’t be intimidated by the page count and give yourself time to really sit down, read and absorb this one. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed!
Happy Reading!
-Anna R.
Love Kuang? Check out my review for Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
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Kindle & Audible: US or CA
The Weekend Readers 
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