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4.0 

Babel

By R. F. Kuang
Babel by R. F. Kuang digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of The Poppy War  

“Absolutely phenomenal. One of the most brilliant, razor-sharp books I've had the pleasure of reading that isn't just an alternative fantastical history, but an interrogative one; one that grabs colonial history and the Industrial Revolution, turns it over, and shakes it out.” -- Shannon Chakraborty, bestselling author of The City of Brass

From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire.

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. 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, an organization dedicated to stopping 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? 

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15836 Reviews

4.0
Thinking Face
Diverse representationMemorableAncientAtmosphericBeautifully-written
Thumbs Up“Babel had all the components of a really good book but it felt like it was lacking something in the story, like the hole in the middle of a donut 🥸. The setting is great for people who love dark academia because it’s the perfect blend of whimsical and collaborative. But for me, the characters are,on paper, super diverse but, in practice, are all really the same person, with similar motives and backstories and interest and ideals. In this way, the minorities are pooled together and the white are very strongly the “other” which I thought was interesting way of tackling the discussion of race in education because it felt so polaized.”
Diverse representationMultilayeredDomestic violenceDisjointedFast-pacedAtmosphericEnchantedFlowery/lush
Thinking Face
Change and growDiverse representationMultilayeredRacismSlow-pacedDarkHistoricalMagicalDescriptive

About R. F. Kuang

Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, and Yellowface. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards. A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Sinophone literature, and Asian American literature.

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