...if the system is so fragile, why do we so easily accept the colonial situation? Why do we think it’s inevitable? Why doesn’t Man Friday ever get himself a rifle, or slit Robinson Crusoe’s neck in the night? The problem is that we’re always living like we’ve lost. [loc. 7046]
A small boy is plucked from the room in Canton where his mother lies dead. A new name, 'Robin Swift', is bestowed upon him by his saviour, Professor Lowell, who takes him back to London and ensures that he is properly educated in Latin and Greek. Eventually he's enrolled in the Royal Institute of Translation, also known as Babel, which 'alone among the Oxford faculties accepts students not of European origin'. Robin's cohort consists of Ramy, from Calcutta; Victoire, from Haiti; and Letty, an admiral's daughter from Brighton. They're trained to create spells, encoded in silver bars, that capture what is lost in translation when translating a word into a different language. One example: a spell based on the English word 'treacle' (a sweet substance traditionally used to disguise the taste of medicine) and the Old French 'triacle' (an antidote or cure for snakebite), which produces a sweet-tasting antidote for most poisons. Another example, based on 'chattel' (property as wealth) and 'cattle' (livestock): 'they fix those bars to iron chains so that slaves can’t escape. You know how? It makes them docile. Like animals.' [loc. 6264].
Babel is a novel about language, about revolution (the subtitle is 'An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution'), about friendship, about racism and, to some degree, sexism -- but most of all it's about colonialism. Robin and the other 'Babblers' are exploited for their knowledge of non-European languages, and expected to be grateful for the privileges conferred (or imposed) upon them. Professor Lowell, like most of the professors of Babel, is portrayed as unremittingly villainous in his dehumanisation of non-Europeans. The British Empire cannot exist without the work of Babel, but doesn't respect or reward those who produce the spell-imbued silver.
I was not wholly convinced by the worldbuilding. In her introduction, Kuang writes that the novel 'takes place in a fantastical version of Oxford in the 1830s, whose history was thoroughly altered by silver-work': and yet the wider world seems indistinguishable from our own. Britain has still lost America; unskilled labourers are only just starting to be put out of work by silvery satanic mills; the opium wars are wreaking havoc in China; the 1832 June Rebellion, later to be the subject of Hugo's Les Miserables, has happened, just as it happened in our timeline. So what difference has all the silver-working made?
This was an engrossing read, though not a cheerful one. I was fascinated by the linguistic elements, repelled by the colonialism, and exhausted by the relentless misery: which I know is the point, but I felt it would have been even more powerful if alleviated by occasional scenes of light-heartedness or happiness. Babel is a tragedy through and through, on every scale from Robin's maltreatment to the appalling oppressions of Empire. Beautifully written, thoroughly researched (there are footnotes throughout, adding historical or linguistic context), and featuring complex, flawed characters with equally complex moral dilemmas: there are so many layers to this novel that I could write about it for hours. That said, the never-ending injustice and dehumanisation were numbing, and I found some of the scenes of magical and mundane violence and death very distressing.
Read for Lockdownbookclub.
Fulfils the ‘a book with a subtitle’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge. The full title is Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution.
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