Many of the seminars are focused on fundamental concepts that all translators should study, such as fidelity to the source text versus the target text.
It’s at its most enchanting when delving into the theories and praxis of translation via Robin’s courses at university the reader gets to listen in on the lectures, which must have derived from Kuang’s own academic background and countless trips down Oxford English Dictionary rabbit holes. Initially doubtful, Robin is eventually converted and joins in the effort to topple Babel, and therefore the empire.īabel leans into the academic fiction genre, from its lithographic cover art to the chapter epigraphs by historical figures and the many footnotes (fictional and nonfictional). Robin’s utopia is cut short, however, when he’s visited by Griffin, a member of the mysterious Hermes Society, who removes the rose-colored glasses, explaining that the silver manufactured by Babel’s faculty and students is what powers the British empire, which is about to stoke a full-scale opium war against China. Silver bars, powered by translation inscriptions, cure illnesses, make rooms bigger, carts and ships faster, explosions more deadly. Those stained-glass windows, that high, imposing dome….” The eighth and highest floor is dedicated to silver-working, the sole fantastical element of the novel’s universe that drives the plot. Though fictional, Babel symbolizes the allure of Oxford as “a tower out of time, a vision from a dream. After coming of age, Robin is taken to Oxford, where-though encountering frequent racism-he finds a new family in his cohort and a new home in the translation studies department, called Babel. Lovell assigns tutors, enforces a strict regimen for Robin to become versed in Latin, Greek, and Mandarin, and is abusive if Robin strays from his studies. We learn soon that this is Robin’s absentee father, Richard Lovell, an Oxford professor who specializes in Mandarin and is the secret sender of the English-language books that Robin devours every month. Robin Swift (whose Chinese name we never learn “I have a name, it’s-” “No, that won’t do.”) is orphaned as a child by cholera in his hometown of Canton, China, and swept away to London by a cold white man.
In a departure from her epic fantasy trilogy The Poppy War, Kuang here creates an alternate history of the 1830s with just a flourish of fantasy. Though not always succeeding, Kuang seeks, on the scale of a magnum opus, to reclaim a part of Oxford history almost always attributed to white men and to imagine a rebellion by students of color within the ivory tower. Kuang’s mission in her latest, with the appropriately lengthy title of Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution. How to take on British imperialism and the history of translation (and its weaponization) in a single novel? That’s R.
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