Babel & navigating a contradictory existence
Fantasy, Fiction, Speculative
Harper Voyage Edition, 542 pages
Overall Rating: 3.5/5
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
R.F. Kuang is an incredibly skilled academic writer. Her extensive education in history and East Asian languages from Georgetown University, Cambridge, Oxford, and Yale shines bright in the world of her 2022 speculative fantasy novel, Babel. However, I would argue that it is this very education that impedes her ability to introduce nuance to her storytelling, and Babel suffers greatly for it.
The first few pages of the book were gripping. Robin's childhood is not necessary context to the world he later inhabits at Oxford, but a compelling exploration of a stilted father and son dynamic that leaves many questions hanging in the air. I found myself turning each page excitedly wanting to know more. That was, until about a quarter into the novel after Robin arrives at Oxford. Kuang's creativity at this stage enters a battle for dominance with her compulsion to over-explain the magic at the center of this world and loses. Silver-working is the process by which translators at Oxford's Royal Institute of Translation (colloquially known as "Babel") imbue bricks of silver with a physical manifestation of what is lost in translation when a word is translated from one language to another. In order for the silver to function, however, the translator must be fluent in both language present in a match-pair. This betrayal of original meaning, the magic of knowing precisely what can be lost in translation, becomes England's beating heart. As its colonial project expands, the silver becomes a hoarded resource only available to the uber-wealthy. The empire steals foreign children from their homeland and employs them in the exploitation of their own people at Oxford. The conflict of the novel derives from Robin, a Cantonese-born and England-raised student at Babel, and his friends confronting this cruelty and their complicity in it.
Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?1
The novel explores Robin's navigation of his contradictory existence through his rebellion. He begins working for the elusive "Hermes Society", a rebel group intent on reallocating Babel's silver resources to the poor and destitute who need it the most. Silver, capable of multiplying food sources, curing disease, and keeping faulty structures stable is used more often than not to make clocks' chimes sound of real birdsong, push carriages along more quickly, and line the pockets of Parliament. Robin's work for Hermes forces him to confront the inability of his two identities, the colonized and the complicit, to coexist at Oxford, or at all. Kuang's exploration of this identity, however, is often pushed aside for academic ramblings and explanations of match-pair translations that at times distract from the story and at others subtract from its potency entirely.
Kuang employs footnotes as a tool to introduce added context and history that Robin's perspective cannot always afford. The academic atmosphere that this creates for the reader is at first enjoyable, but verges on distracting as the novel progresses and nearly every page is inundated with multiple footnotes explaining translations, history, and details readers don't require to interpret the text as it is. I felt my competence as a reader questioned on numerous occasions. For example, a footnote in the third act of the novel describes the "genius" of the constructed isolation of Babel's program, as it breeds complicity by forcing foreign students so deep into their work that they never get the chance to relate to students who might be in their situation and are angry about it. This footnote in particular exemplified my issue with Kuang's writing, as she spends more time explaining her genius to readers than she spends adding interpretable nuance to her storytelling. I felt perfectly capable of deducing the isolating forces of Oxford through the explored relationships of Robin and his friends, and didn't enjoy having an explanation of said forces shoved down my throat just in case I didn't get it.
Kuang displays an apt understanding of the workings of the colonial project and its effects on the colonized, but the application of this understanding in Babel was heavy-handed and unambiguous to the point of suffocation. I personally felt beat over the head with the messaging of the novel. I would argue that this lack of ambiguity is helpful to first-time readers of postcolonial literature, as they lack the literary context and background in theory to deduce certain themes for themselves. However, as someone who (not to toot my own horn) is well-versed in that area of study, I found the message lacked the flexibility that makes postcolonial literature so compelling to analyze. I'm reminded of a similar novel in which the protagonist also dies at the hand of the colonizer (also, in a way, of his own will), explores his contradictory existence and complicity in a harmful system, and brings into question the act of translation as an act of betrayal. That novel is Houseboy by Ferdinand Oyono, published in 1956.
Houseboy is a succinct (122 page) exploration of an identity forged in the fires of colonialism during the French occupation of Cameroon. The protagonist, Toundi, must decide whether he can live with his survival through complicity as an act of violence on his own people. Toundi's death, which occurs on the first page of the novel, is an end he brings upon himself by choosing the side of the colonizer over subjugation. When he learns he is disposable, that the colonizer was never acting in his best interest, it is already too late. Houseboy is one of my favorite novels, as its flawed protagonist reaps what he sows through his belief in a system that saw him as subhuman.
I am Maka by my mother and Ndjem by my father. My ancestors were cannibals. Since the white men came we have learnt other men must not be looked upon as animals.2
Toundi believes what the colonizer tells him. The backwards French education he receives, the one that tells him he came from an invented cannibal race, that assures him the white man and his Christianity will be his salvation, is one he embraces without flinching. When the time for rebellion comes, he cannot outrun the consequences of this fatal mistake. His belief in the system is his death, it always was. This is the level in which Babel, and Kuang's construction of Robin as a protagonist, falters. It refuses to make Robin anything but the hero. His complicity is the fault of the colonizer and is never explored as a fault of his own instinct to survive beyond the veneer of guilt it causes him and the trail of bodies his actions leave in his wake. Even these deaths, however, are mere martyrs for Robin's self-actualization.
'Heavens, Robin, she was just some Chink.'
'But I'm just some Chink, Professor. I'm also her son.' Robin felt a fierce urge to cry. He forced it down. Hurt never garnered sympathy from his father. But anger, perhaps, might spark fear. 'Did you think you'd washed that part out of me?'
He had become so good at holding two truths in his head at once. That was an Englishman and he was not. That Professor Lovell was his father and not. That the Chinese were a stupid, backwards people, and that he was also one of them.3
After hearing out my issues with the novel, you might be wondering why I gave it 3.5 stars. Despite my gripes with Kuang's writing, there were actually many bits of this novel I found compelling and emotionally moving. Robin and his father's relationship was one of the main reasons I sped through the second half of the novel after drudging through it for over a week. Their conversations made me cry on multiple occasions, and I felt Robin's frustration for all of their unanswered questions of their relationship. I found the conversations between Robin and his friends about history's malleability and their place in the world (especially considering their position in a colonial system that actively seeks to harm them) relatable to many young people given America's current political climate. They love Oxford and the comforts it provides, but come to understand that these comforts come at the expense of others. Kuang speaks to younger audiences with her writing. She gives them something to believe in. She gives them hope that young people can change history, even with all of the odds stacked against them. I believe it is this audience who responded so resoundingly to Babel and its messaging. It is for them, after all. I wish I understood the extreme emotional reactions I saw people having to the end of this book, as it was something I was expecting and excited for, but I found Kuang's inability to let her story breathe pulled me out of it just long enough to get frustrated.
I see the value of Babel for young fantasy readers. It is an introduction to colonialism that, for many, is long overdue. It gives voice to the frustrations of being a young person and feeling like the world is crumbling around you before you've been given a chance to experience it. It understands the interpersonal conflict of racial and ethnic difference, and how some of these differences can never be reconciled. It speaks to a generation who is tired of letting the adults do the dirty work. It speaks to a generation who demands to be the heroes. I can only hope that Babel will inspire this audience to dive more deeply into the vast literary world of postcolonialism and not take R.F. Kuang for her every word, or lack thereof.