Babel Paperback – August 17, 2023

This is the first book in a while that's left me truly speechless. It starts off sad, and slowly builds until Chekhov's gun fires and the tower comes crumbling down.There are so many things I could say about this book, I'm not really sure where to begin, so I guess I'll start at the beginning. At the start of the book, Babel is shown as a wonderful and amazing creation that benefits all. However even then you see the mask begin to slip, the hints of cruelty and indifference. As the story continues, the mask slips more and more until you're staring into the mass of harm and rot Babel had become, still keeping up its smile even with the newly visible blood dripping from its wealth.Speaking of slow changes in perspective, Robin was an amazing choice as the main character! He starts off falling into the appeal of Babel and what it offers, buying into its disguise as he's gifted the riches stolen from foreign lands without understanding the pain that got it there. There's even a scene in the book early on where Robin sees a homeless family and tosses literal pennies from his limitless budget at them, which was a perfect metaphor for how Babel as a whole acted. Tossing pennies at the poor people while patting itself on the back and ignoring the actual horrors of what's happening. As the story goes on though, he starts seeing the cracks in the walls and the gaps in the mask. Watching his character's descent from a peaceful but cowardly kid into the determined martyr that was willing to tear down an empire with its own creation was somehow both extremely satisfying and extremely haunting.The commentary on violence was also incredibly thought out and explained. One thing this book did particularly well was showing arguments for both sides. Neither the violent nor the peaceful side were dumbed down to make the message easier, but the effects and results of the actions still made an extremely convincing argument. Another thing I loved about this book was the realism when showing the ways the characters affected the world. It showed clearly that revolutions weren't just everyone vs the government, the fighting isn't glamorous or fair, and the people's reactions and ideas were always reasonable for their character.Babel as a whole also makes an amazing metaphor. It shows you the side you'd see if you lived there at the time, all the luxury and none of the violence. The people weren't shown the silver mines, or the opium dens, or the fields of plants entire cities were leveled to grow. It really made me process for the first time why it took so long for significant movements against colonialism to form. This book also did an amazing job of showing that some people will stare directly at the belly of the beast and still choose to look away since that's easier than confronting what they'd ignored for years.All of that coming to an end as Babel, doomed to one day fall beneath its own claws, was crushed by the very thing it claimed to idealize and fought to protect. The languages and silver stolen from faraway lands became the very things that brought about Babel's downfall.

It is nice to read a book that celebrates words. All books celebrate words in some sense, but Babel by RF Kuang celebrates words for word’s sake. Their origin, their interconnectedness, their power. Power. There is power in words, and power is what this story is about: Who has it, who lacks it, who doesn’t want to lose it. Set mostly in England, mostly in Oxford in the 1830’s, this is a fantasy and alternate history. There is magic in this world. The magic runs on silver and those who can find the right words in the right languages to use that silver. If you etch the right pair of words into a bar of silver, you can make it do amazing things, sometimes mundane things like making a carriage ride smoother, sometimes spectacular things like holding up a bridge. But finding the right words with similar meanings but in different languages requires translators.Our protagonist, an orphan from Canton given the anglicized name Robin Swift, is groomed by his guardian to join the famous translators program at Oxford. Once there he is destined to study at the prestigious Babel tower where all the mysteries of the words and their effect on silver are explored.It turns out the best translators are those from other lands who have had to learn English. The masters of Babel, recruit people from China, from India, from the Caribbean. This sets up a conflict because we have the colonizers, seeking the aid of those who have been colonized. The translators are promised a comfortable life, far more comfortable than if they had been left in their own countries. But they do begin to wonder at what cost this comfort is coming to them.The full title of the book is Babel: An Arcane History. Since this is a book about words, we should assume R.F. Kuang was deliberate in her choice of word usage. We note that Webster defines “arcane” as “Known or knowable only to the initiate: Secret. More broadly: mysterious, obscure.” It is from the Latin “Arcanus” which meant hidden, but also meant intimate or confidential, or also meant trustworthy. All the various shades of meaning of an individual word are vital to the translators working at Oxford’s Babel tower to keep the British empire running at full steam, to keep it the leader of the world. Words do not translate directly from one language to another. Each culture adds its own flavor. So when you translate you have to consider not only the main meaning, but also the alternate meanings and the connotations that come with the word. We have heard that the Inuit people have 50 different words for snow. That claim is a bit overblown, but it is true that they have more words for snow that we do. So, if you translate one of those words into English as “snow”, what part of the meaning are you losing?I do recommend this book. It is an interesting read as well as an enjoyable one. Even though it is an alternate history, I did learn things about the real history. And it does make you think about the consequences of colonization.