Source of book: Audiobook from the library
This book was our selection for this month for the Literary Lush Book Club. It was on my list already both because I read one of Kuang’s other books, Yellowface, and liked it; and because several friends liked Babel.
These books are, shall we say, very different. Which is an indication that Kuang is versatile in multiple genres.
I ended up listening to this on audiobook along with my wife (also part of the book club) since we had a couple of trips out of town together. We finished most of it, then set aside an evening to do our ironing and listen to the rest.
Before I get into the book itself, I want to say at the outset that I very much enjoyed the book. Its strengths include excellent and consistent worldbuilding, a sympathetic yet complicated and messy protagonist, a compelling story, and so much delicious discussion of translation and words. And also, an ending that felt inevitable and satisfying, which isn’t always the case in modern fiction.
The weaknesses are several. First, the book does way too much preaching about the evils of colonialism. If I were here editor, I would have insisted on cutting 50 to 100 pages worth of preachiness. The thing is, it isn’t necessary. The story itself is ample argument, and the preaching detracts, rather than adds.
In my opinion, the core problem is that Kuang (who was in her mid-20s and a grad student when she wrote the book - so youthful follies) doesn’t trust her readers. She sees them as being like Letty - who I suspect was based on a person or persons the author knew - rich white girls who fail or refuse to understand how racism affects people of color. Thus, too many explanations.
I would like to assure Kuang (in the unlikely event she runs across this blog) that many of her readers already are on her side regarding colonialism, and also can draw their own conclusions from the story itself. We don’t need the preaching. And I suspect that most of the people who would be drawn to this kind of book are that kind of reader already.
The other flaws are more minor. There are a few minor plot holes that astute readers can find, although they are not significant to the story. A few in our club, myself included, wish that we had gotten Victoire’s back-story sooner than the epilogue. And perhaps more of Victoire herself, because she is a great character.
Finally, I think that there is the question of ostensibly 19th Century characters talking using modern ideas of sexism, colonialism, racism, and so on. In some books, this importation of modern ways of thinking irritates the hell out of me. On the other, since this book was clearly set in an alternate reality - one in which, most notably, women are allowed to attend Oxford in the 1830s - I found it to be just part of the worldbuilding along with the silver-based magic/technology.
Okay, so all of that out of the way, what is this book anyway?
The book is an alternate history or perhaps alternate universe version of Oxford University in the 1830s. In this world, Britain’s worldwide empire is sustained by a peculiar form of magic - aka technology - that doesn’t exist in our world.
The technology requires silver bars, inscribed with similar words in different languages - words that could be translated as synonyms, but, because translation is never entirely exact, have very slightly differing meanings or connotations. This gap in meaning creates the power to create in reality the difference in nuance.
These silver bars and their magical (or technological - a distinction without a difference, perhaps…) powers are the basis for everything that England is able to do, from steam power to weapons. And a lot of mundane things too, like making flowers smell better and have brighter colors.
This particular magic is well thought out, and developed in fascinating ways throughout the book. It is a brilliant idea that happens to be a lot of fun, while also carrying meaning in our own world.
One could see the silver-based industrial revolution in the book as a stand-in for several ideas in our own world. The real-life Industrial Revolution, for example. As the book points out, industrial technology had a number of nasty consequences, from mass unemployment to environmental degradation.
One could also, perhaps, see the silver as a metaphor for fossil fuels, which powered the Industrial Revolution. Or for extractive capitalism. Or capitalism more generally. Or for whatever technologies enabled Empire.
The fact that any or all of these can be seen in the silver bars is why they work so well in the book. They are a reduction of a spectrum of factors that enabled the existence of the British Empire, and now enable the existence of an American Empire, and all the exploitation, enslavement, genocide, and other evils that those empires have brought to our world.
Unlike the more complicated reality of our own world, in the book, all that sustains Empire is concentrated in one single - and thus vulnerable - base of material, knowledge, and technology. Because of this, taking down the Empire is far easier than it was and is in our world.
Born into this alternative world is Robin, a Chinese boy whose mother dies of Cholera at the beginning of the book. Robin is saved by a mysterious professor from Oxford, who whisks him away to England to study to gain admittance to Oxford, specifically the Royal Institute of Translation, aka “Babel.”
This institute has its own tower at Oxford - yeah, not at all subtle with the Biblical references, although I wonder how many of Kuang’s generation are familiar with those stories now. In that tower is contained all the knowledge of languages collected over the centuries, which is necessary to discover new translation pairs to power the silver bars.
As Robin discovers, he was literally created to be a cog in this Institute - to take a fluent knowledge of Mandarin and Cantonese along with English (he was provided an English nanny as a child) to mine the translation possibilities. To this end, Professor Lovell fathered him with an impoverished Chinese woman, and took him to England to train him for the task.
At first, Robin loves Oxford and all it stands for. He makes friends with his “cohort” of translators: the English Letty, sent to Oxford after her brother dies a drunken death; Victoire, a Haitian woman born into quasi-slavery; and Ramy, born in British India. All four are linked by their experiences of discrimination at the mostly all-white-male Oxford, and their backstories containing loss in various ways.
Soon, however, Robin realizes that all is not well. His father, who never acknowledges his paternity, sees Robin as a pawn in the larger game of Empire, not a fully human person. Babel’s silver bars seem to be used, not to better the lives of colonized people, or even working class Brits, but for either frivolous or nefarious purposes. And the once close cohort begins to fray as time goes on.
Robin also meets his older half-brother, Griffin, who faked his own death and left Babel to work for a mysterious organization called the Hermes Society, which works to undermine the Empire in various ways, from lobbying work to sabotage and theft.
And finally, the British Empire is on the brink of starting the Opium War - a true parallel to our world. This would serve both to cement the Empire and devastate China, which horrifies Robin.
I’ll stop there, because I don’t want to give any further spoilers.
I did want to discuss a few more things about the book, however.
First, the Opium Wars. I remember reading about them in high school, and being thoroughly appalled and disgusted. It is difficult to think of a more thoroughly evil and deplorable action than what the British Empire did. There is literally nothing remotely redeeming about it. The only “good” to come of it was that it made a handful of merchants obscenely rich. And that came at the cost of British and Chinese lives, the destruction of far more lives, and the establishment of a precedent that money would govern foreign policy.
I mean, the slave trade is still probably the worst, but the Opium Wars are pretty damn close.
One wonders if there had been a chance for an ordinary student like Robin in our own world to prevent the Opium Wars, if he would have taken it. Morally, it would seem he would have been compelled to.
In this way, Kuang, by carefully choosing a historical event that was morally sickening, makes her point very well indeed. And thus, in my view, didn’t need to preach about it.
The book is notable for a near-complete absence of sex. It is hard to tell how much of this is due to Kuang’s choice of era - how to write convincing sexuality in early-Victorian England. I mean, this was the era of Jane Austen, who used a lot of dialogue to create frisson, but carefully avoided anything actually physical.
But the other thing that is possible, in my opinion, is that Kuang just didn’t feel like sexuality was necessary. All we get are a few hints here and there. So, we know, for example, that Letty has a thing for Ramy, but we are also teased very subtly that Ramy and Robin are the actual lovers. Very subtly indeed. I think it is there, but you have to pay attention.
The book is, in my opinion, a classic tragedy. Like an old Greek play, or a modern Shakespeare like, say, Hamlet, it is laid out in five parts which correspond well to the acts in a tragedy. You can find the inciting event (Robin going to England), the turning point (the inciting of the Opium Wars), and the final catastrophe.
The arc of Robin’s character is in many ways similar to Hamlet, and the end result equally morally ambiguous. Which, perhaps, depends on what you think of Fortinbras, or what would have come after a British Empire that collapsed in the 1830s.
This was another thing I greatly enjoyed about the book. It taps into the things I love about Shakespeare and about the ancient Greeks and their stories.
As I noted early in this post, I personally loved all the stuff about translation. Even if I disagree with the one character who opined that all translation is lying - it is untrue to the original meaning.
For me, I think that all human communication suffers from that problem. We never entirely communicate our meaning to each other, both because words are imperfect substitutes for human experience of ourselves, and because humans are all imperfect in their ability to use words to express meaning.
One of the things I have experienced over and over throughout my 16 years as a blogger is that try as I might, what I type on my screen is at best a translation of what I intend to say, a reduction of my feelings and experiences and reactions to the straitjacket of language. Some days, I feel I have come close, and that this translation is “good” in some way. And I have certainly been told by readers that what I communicated resonated for them.
Perhaps even more so, all of us are confined by our own literacy. I am (sadly) monolingual, able to think in English, but not in other languages. This is Robin’s superpower - that he can think in multiple languages - a power shared by his friends, of course. But any language contains its limitations, and to a disturbing extent, our ability to think and reason and express happens within the confines of the language we speak and the meaning of words in our time and place.
As a philosopher might say, “here lie dragons.” It is certainly uncomfortable to think one’s ability to think depends that much on one’s learned communication forms as an infant.
While I am monolingual, I very much enjoy reading books in translation, and even with my own limited knowledge, I can appreciate the art that goes into it. Reading multiple translations, for example, one can see the different compromises and approximations and how different readers choose to prioritize the different nuances.
As a result of this, though, I realized as a young person that translation was an art, not a science, and that translators bring their own selves and biases and ways of thinking to their work. Which is why it frustrates me to see ancient works like the Bible used as if our English translations, with all their theological baggage, are somehow word-for-word straight from the mouth of Almighty God. Rather than what they are: an attempt at communication across millennia and culture and distance and language - an attempt that is not always even in good faith on some points. (See: male supremacist decisions in translation)
And, with that, it circles back to my point that all human communication is in some sense translation - an imperfect but necessary art. Arguments over meaning tend to overlook this, and too many demand certainty and the superiority of their own views rather than accept the spectrum of existence and meaning and connection that define us as humans.
As a final thought, I want to talk a bit about the ending and the message of the book. If you haven’t read the book yet, I would advise skipping this part, as it definitely has spoilers.
I have seen two different subtitles for the book, but the one that I want to focus on is “Or, the Necessity of Violence.”
There is a lot going on here, and I do not think the subtitle expresses the message of the book at all.
Most obvious is the dispute between Griffin - pro-violence and impatient with non-violent resistance - and Antony, committed to non-violent means of protest. In the end, Robin chooses Griffin’s way.
Or does he?
I don’t think that is at all clear. Robin certainly destroys property. And human life is lost as collateral damage. Indeed, the destruction of Empire - any Empire - inevitably causes great suffering. But so does the continued existence of Empire. The moral calculus is impossible for any one person to truly make.
But with the one notable exception, Robin doesn’t do direct violence to anyone. Rather, he takes down the system by direct sabotage. Which isn’t the same as violence, exactly.
This isn’t the classic “assassinate the king” with the expectation that everything will get better. It isn’t the “start a war” ploy either.
Conveniently, the Empire in the book depends on a single point of failure. If only it were so in our own world. (And, believe me, if such a point existed, someone would have utilized it long ago.) Robin simply causes that point to fail.
The book also conveniently stops at a dramatically satisfying place. It is an ending to a story.
But what comes afterward is actually more important than what Robin has done. We do not know the outcome, only that the Empire has lost its overwhelming advantage. Will something better be built? Or will it just lead to another Empire taking its place. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…
It is the building that comes afterward that matters the most in our own world. What will we build? How will we build it? It isn’t enough to collapse and Empire; the rebuilding will make all the difference.
In the end, it will be left to people like Victoire, with her ability to communicate across geography and language, who will be most necessary in finding an alternative to the exploitation of Empire. It is an interesting thought to end the book with, for sure.
So, as I noted, I really did enjoy this book a lot. Yes, it had its flaws and felt at times like a first novel, but so much was very good, and I was drawn into the world and the story.
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