Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram | GoodReads)
Born in Canton, an orphan boy christens himself ‘Robin Swift’ when an Oxford scholar adopts him and trains him to enroll at Babel, the world’s most powerful and prestigious institute of translation. Once there, Robin soon finds himself torn between his privileged life as a scholar and joining a secret resistance group to fight the extractive forces of colonialism.
In R.F. Kuang’s fantasy novel, Babel is more than just a premier school for translators. It also produces, stores, and maintains magical silver bars that power crucial technologies across the world: roads, bridges, guns, cannons, ships, factories, just about everything. These bars are fueled by unique word pairs in two different languages that can induce supernatural effects. In essence, training to become a translator is akin to becoming a wizard or witch, because only language experts can come up with new magical match-pairs for silver work.
Set in the 1800s, Babel opens by introducing eleven-year-old Robin as an impoverished boy who has just lost his mother to a cholera outbreak in Canton. He is rescued by Professor Richard Lovell, taken to London, and rigorously tutored at home in preparation for a future as a language scholar. That Lovell is likely Robin’s biological father is an open secret revealed fairly early in the novel, but the professor makes it clear he has no interest in being anything more than a generous benefactor and strict disciplinarian to the boy, which if you think about it, is a typical 19th-century British dad.
For anybody who has already ready anything by R. F. Kuang (Poppy War Trilogy, Yellowface) and enjoyed it, ‘Babel’ is a well-written book, which means the sentences flow easily, the descriptions aren’t overdone. But the storytelling isn’t as strong as it should’ve been. The secondary characters are all generically forgettable and the premise gets increasingly weaker as it nears the end.
The first few chapters which focus on Robin’s isolated years of being tutored at his benefactor’s home for a future at Babel are interesting, after which the character barely gets a chance to breathe at the new campus. He gets mixed up with rebels within the first week of arriving at Oxford, instantly putting his life and future in jeopardy. And for me this was the biggest flaw in the novel: the narrative bell curve doesn’t serve enough highs for the lows to emotionally affect the reader.
Robin rarely gets to enjoy his life as a student, he is either slogging with coursework, or doing dangerous things that could get him killed. He talks of his close friendships, but RF Kuang mostly demonstrates these connections through talk in the first half. And I don’t mean dialogue, it’s just Robin telling the readers he’d give his life for his friends and we are supposed to believe him. Their interactions are limited, if anything, they’re mostly arguing with each other.
There’s Ramiz Rafi Mirza, a scholar from Calcutta, who detests the British, Victoire Desgraves, a smart student from Haiti raised in France, and finally Letitia Price, a privileged wealthy British student who doesn’t understand why her ‘friends’ do not share her optimistic feelings for the British empire. Unfortunately, this diversity adds precious little to the tale, and if anything, seems overtly artificial.
One way to sum up ‘Babel’ would be – Half-Chinese boy learns colonialism is bad & joins a secret society to stop Britain from getting more powerful and waging unfair wars. The climax has a handful of students and two professors supposedly bringing the entire country to its knees, which wasn’t just too convenient, but also disappointingly boring. The author tries to depict how ‘the pen can be infinitely stronger than the sword’ in this fantasy about words, and language, but it feels like a very far-fetched, delusional one.
If I had to rate R. F. Kuang’s ‘Babel’ based on pure engagement value, I’d perhaps go for 2 stars out of 5. Because by the climactic chapters, I really didn’t care anymore about what was going to happen. I took my time with the last 70 odd pages, reading only a few pages each day, with the plot sparking no curiosity, excitement, or intrigue over ‘what next?’
Rating for ‘Babel’: 3 stars on 5.
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