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 for translation and, more importantly, magic. The unique magic system of silver working―the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars―has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.
For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, a secret society dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide…
560 pages
Published August 23, 2022
If I tried for a hundred years, I don't think I could come up with a story that appealed so well to my interests and philosophies. Babel was, and still is, a brilliantly executed story of language, of culture, of revolution, and how they all feed into one another, poisoning and enriching, uplifting and dehumanizing, all at the same time. It follows the story of Robin, rescued from a bad situation in China, raised by a stern man with great expectations: to master languages and earn a place at Oxford's Royal Institute of Translation, known to many as Babel. Once there, his task is to excel, to become one of the prized translators who can use silver to turn language into magic, the same magic that keeps the British Empire powerful and expansive. But the longer he's there and the more he sees, he comes to understand that empire is not without cost, and that cost might be too dear to pay.
I'm a fan of dark academia, and linguistics is one of my pet interests (heck, my blog name comes from the Japanese phrase 読書の秋, dokusho no aki, often translated simply as "autumn is for reading"), so a lot of Babel appealed to me before I even read the 1st page. The idea of sinking into a setting where the main character's general task is to study, to learn, to immerse himself in the art and science of language and translation was deeply compelling. It's a dream I used to have when I was young, if I'm honest: being given a prestigious position at a famous university, my expenses covered, and all I have to really do is devote myself to learning... I'd ask who wouldn't want that, but really, a lot of people wouldn't. But I did, and so following Robin's story allowed me a little bit of vicarious satisfaction. I might not be able to live that life, but I could read about someone who could.
But there was more to the magic of the novel than just the way words play off each other. The British Empire rose to power in no small part due to the way silver was able to carry the meaning between related words and turn it into something we would consider magic, but in many ways was a practical stand-in for technology. Inscribed silver bars made looms move faster, made guns more accurate, made buildings stay standing when they realistically shouldn't have been able to. It was a fascinating magic system, employing the meaning that lies between words in different languages, and using a metal to carry that meaning into the real world.
It sounds so vague when I say it like that, so I'll give an example employed by the novel itself. The Chinese character 气 means steam or vapour, but also carries connotations of energy, so using that character plus the English word for energy on a silver bar would increase steam-powered machines beyond what they could normally do. How this was discovered and developed, the book doesn't mention, but the power lies in the meaning between the two words. How they're similar, but also how they're different. It's an enormously clever way to look at language and translation, and I was fascinated by every example that the book raised.
But there's a catch. The more the empire expands, the more foreign words creep their way into the everyday language of the colonizers, reducing the effectiveness of those words being used in silver-working. Thus people like Robin, from China, and his friend Ramy, from India, have great value to Babel. There's a greater gap between their languages and English, so they have more to potential to offer the Translation Institute. And there lies the rub. They were lifted from their former lives, be those lives peaceful or troubled, and thrust into a life that told them, in myriad ways, that their only value was what they could give to Britain. Their homelands, their people, were just resources to be exploited, and they should take part in that exploitation because... Well, because wasn't it wonderful that they were given places at such a prestigious university, and wouldn't be it more wonderful to bring civilization to those poor ignorant savage people that they came from?
Throughout the story, Robin was approached by the Hermes Society, people who saw the truth of the way Britain was exploiting people and wanted it to stop. He often thinks they're planning to go too far with their methods, but when he sees firsthand how much destruction of China's culture that England has wrought, and how much more they want to bring in order to secure access to China's silver mines, something in him breaks, changing the trajectory of his life.
There's so much in Babel that deserves unpacking. Language, how it morphs and what it becomes, is at the heart of the story, but so is colonialism, and so is revolution. As is industrialization. It's a densely-layered story that presents a situation where there is no clear right thing to do, but so many wrong things. It gives us characters who are flawed, and in so many ways, but you can't help but love them because they're trying, against all odds, to do their best and make a good life for themselves. Not just for themselves, but for others, even when they disagree about what that better life should look like. It shows us that people can both love and hate a thing, take advantage of privilege while also trying to undermine the social structure that created it. People are complex and messy creatures, much like the languages they speak, and I loved that.
Like the system of magic employed in Babel, so much of what makes the book profound lies between the words themselves, not merely on the surface but below it. Kuang captured complex and contradictory concepts in her writing, and Babel benefits from taking your time to really consider what's being said, to not just connect with the surface of the story. You can't read it without being affected, on some level, by the ideas it presents. Whether you agree with Robin, or Ramy, or Letty, or Griffin, the ideas stick with you, get under your skin, and change the way you look at the world, right down to the words you use.
I closed Babel with tears in my eyes. I loved every moment of it, even the painful bits, and to say I want more of that world would be an understatement, but still. It ended at the exact right place, the moment right after the end, and before the beginning. What the future of that version of the world might be, it's impossible to say. It's left up to the reader to imagine. I think it's safe to say that this might be the most profound book I read this year, one that will stay with me for a long time to come.
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