Babel

 By: R F Kuang

Location: FIC KUA

Genre: Fantasy

Babel was absolutely impressive, ambitious, and intelligently crafted. As unbelievable as it sounds, R.F. Kuang has triumphed over The Poppy War Trilogy—which I loved so much—with this one book.

“Language was always the companion of empire, and as such, together they begin, grow, and flourish. And later, together, they fall.

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.

here is a great review from goodreads of this book by Sofia

By the end of Babel, I was shaking. Maybe out of grief, maybe out of awe; I felt as if I had watched something monumental flourish and collapse. And, for a minute, the world seemed so still, like the last few pages were a clip from a silent film. I’m writing this review immediately after finishing the book. I think, at some point in the near future, the enormity of what I have just read will come slamming into me. But for now, I will type away and try, in vain, to express the shockwave that I know is about to hit the literary world.


Babel has the weight of a modern literary classic, although it is a unique blend of historical fiction, fantasy, and nonfiction. Kuang’s writing can be very technical, and often reads like a textbook. Despite the dense, lecture-like paragraphs about etymology and the history of language, Babel is incredibly immersive. It’s so easy to get swept up in this story. Over the 24 hours that I was reading this, I would tell myself that I was just sitting down to read a few pages, only to accidentally read one hundred.

I enjoy reading nonfiction and I have a passion for languages, so when I closed the cover of the book feeling like I had just completed a university course, I was filled with this sort of humming glee. I can see myself reading Babel again and again, poring over every sentence with the same fascination that I experienced this first time through.

Rebecca Roanhorse calls Babel Kuang’s love-hate letter to academia, which could not be more accurate. Nowhere else have I read academia described with so much biting, loving, unflinching detail.


Babel honors the magic of translation and linguistics. While many say that words are just sequences of sounds given meaning, language is undeniably a keystone of history and culture. Translation is a highly underappreciated art. Every time words are converted between languages, they lose some of their association, some of their meaning and gravity. What is most important in a translation? The author’s style and voice? The emotional message? The exact words themselves?


Robin, the main character, feels so real. For most of the book, he grapples with impossible decisions. He was taken to Babel without choice, but he feels at home in the tower, which feeds his hunger for knowledge. He knows that the research he works on supports British imperialism, but he relishes the power he wields as a translator and silver-worker. As he witnesses Britain pump opium into China, his homeland, he struggles to choose between the utopian life of comfort and discovery he has grown to treasure and everything he has wilfully ignored for most of his life: the fact that he will never truly be accepted in Oxford for who he really is, that to the empire, people like him are either curiosities to be examined or subhumans to be exploited. Staying at Babel feels like a betrayal, but the enormity of the other option frightens him: join the secretive Hermes Society to take a stand against Britain’s abuse.

This is where many of the most weighty questions are raised. As the title suggests, Babel is in part a breakdown of the necessity of violence. It’s easy to say that nothing is solved by brute force that could not have been solved by diplomacy, but will an oppressor ever be able to sacrifice their pride and greed? At what point does a line need to be crossed, a transition from peaceful activism to the threat or action of violent upheaval?


Robin, Ramy, Victoire, and Letty are all meticulously drawn characters. While their bond is fiery and passionate, they are afraid to test the limits of their inherent differences. Letty, raised in an upper-class white family, has trouble understanding how Robin, Ramy, and Victoire will never truly be free at Babel. How they were taken from their countries and shackled to Babel, forced to help construct the same empire that is destroying their homes and enslaving their people.


Babel is passionate, scathing, incendiary, fervent. It has all the inevitability and gravity of a tidal wave, a massive force crashing into me, sweeping me away. Here, I find that language has failed me once again, because I cannot write a sentence or a paragraph or a whole review that will quite capture how I felt when I finished Babel. I will leave it for you to discover, because if you pick up just one book this year, make it this one.