REVIEW: Babel by R.F. Kuang

“That's the beauty of learning a new language. It should feel like an enormous undertaking. It ought to intimidate you. It makes you appreciate the complexity of the ones you know already.” - R.F. Kuang

I’m not smart enough to fully express how brilliant I think this book is. Therefore, I’ll refrain from trying and instead talk about three things I still think about the most when brooding about this fantastic piece of historical fantasy.

Robin is saved from his cholera-infested home in Canton by an English Oxford professor named Richard Lovell. He leaves behind his dead mother and everything he knew to study Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese at Professor Lovell’s home in London, later enrolling at Oxford University’s Centre for Translation, located in the tower Babel.

There, he meets fellow students Ramy and Victoire, who are also not originally from England but were brought there because of their gift for languages and their “gift of a native language other than English”, as well as Letty, the only English student among the four. At Babel, they learn about the ability of translation to create magic when engraved in silver and how it makes them one of England’s most valuable resources.

However, their idyllic new lives soon turn sour when Robin intuitively helps a group of thieves steal silver from the tower. He discovers that he has been blinded by Oxford’s and England’s charm and starts questioning the true motives of the Empire and the role they want him to play in their crusade of colonialism.

Dark Academia Well Done

Babel is peak dark academia, just as it should be. RF Kuang is a highly educated Marshall Scholarship recipient, and her intellect and education drip from every single page. There is so much love for language between the lines, so much clever linguistic detail, so much translation philosophy, from fun facts to brain-teasers, that made me stare at my living room wall for ages.

This is what dark academia books should be like. Not just a pretty setting, dark coats and characters pretending to be deep and poetic. Too many people who claim to love the genre only love the aesthetic and leave out the academia part, thinking setting their novel in a university is enough. However, in Babel, you can feel a scholar’s stress; Kuang even manages to criticise the romanticisation of (dark) academia within the book itself and she, like in every one of her books, be it Yellowface, the Poppy War trilogy, or now Babel, expertly manages to point out the systematic discrimination of marginalised groups, that is so easy to overlook or to wilfully ignore, even if you yourself suffer from it.

The Subtlety of Romance

If you are upset about love stories being squeezed into every singe genre there is, even if it’s completely unnecessary, I hear you. At the same time, leaving out love stories completely is usually just as unrealistic, as humans will always find a way to pine, in my experience.

Kuang manages to include romantic hints without making the story about them at all. Yes, Robin’s probably in love with Ramy, so was Letty, and then there’s the whole Griffin/Evie/Sterling triangle that was only mentioned in a bloody footnote - They’re fucking teenagers, of course there’s love and romance involved - however, Kuang manages to weave it into the story without letting it take away from the actual weight of the plot.

A protagonist in love can still be other things as well. And a story that includes characters who are in love can still relate to deeper, more meaningful themes. Had she left out the romantic feelings between any of the characters, the plot still could have played out exactly the same, but adding it made it richer, ´more realistic, smoother. Kuang manages to find the balance that so many books lack, nowadays, and I love and hate her for it.

Anti-Whiteness

A lot of the negative reviews on Babel focus on the supposed one-dimensionality of most of its white characters. Except Professor Craft, all white people, or more precisely, all non-English white people, turn out to be villains, unable to understand the most basic things about racism (Slavery is bad. Getting Chinese children hooked on opium is bad. Fathering kids just to groom them to be translators for your own benefit is bad).

As a white person, it was hard for me to read about all the (though set in a semi-fictional setting) injustice that people of colour/without a solely English background have suffered. And yes, some passages of the book do seem a little “preachy”, spoken with a wagging finger, and an incredibly lecturing tone… But you do realise that this whole thing is written from Robin’s perspective, right? Do you really expect someone who’s been treated poorly because he’s not “fully English” his entire life to tell a story that is essentially about racism and colonialism, who’s been abused physically and emotionally, who’s seen white people openly advocate for getting children hooked on a drug just to get some more trading options, to tell a story objectively? Are you serious? You’re putting that on him as well?

A lot of the times when people from marginalised groups speak up about discrimination, others are quick to point out their flaws in return. “Oh, but men never get custody of the kids”, “Oh, but they get to call each other the N-word, and they insult me too. They’re just as racist” etc. It’s normal to get defensive, but pointing out injustice should never result in putting more pressure on the victim, like taking the high-road every single time. If anything, Robin losing himself in some “anti-whiteness” is the most realistic thing about this whole story, if I’m honest. So please, think about the term “perspective” before you complain about ignorant white people in the 19th century being unrealistic.

---

Overall, Babel was one of my favourite reads of 2024. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in language, especially people with more than one first language. I’m German and I speak English pretty well (as everyone does nowadays) and even I absolutely adored this. I can’t imagine how many of the linguistic concepts went over my head, simply because I don’t have the same gift (turned blessing or curse?) as Robin, Ramy and Victoire.

It’s not an easy read, nothing to be opened for a few minutes on my train ride to work. It's something I sat down for, armed with a highlighter and a pencil, usually wide awake and excited as compared to sleepy and wanting to calm down. This is a book that will cause you to think, to let you discover, to make you suffer - But God, will it be worth it, if you let it!