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Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Kuang (the Poppy War trilogy) underwhelms with a didactic, unsubtle take on dark academia and imperialism. After the unnamed protagonist's mother dies in 1830s Canton, he dubs himself Robin Swift at the urging of professor Richard Lovell, an Oxford sinologist who tutors Mandarin-speaking Robin to become a student at Babel, Oxford's Royal Institute of Translation. Robin falls in love with Oxford and his cohort: witty Calcutta-born Ramiz Rafi Mirza; secretive Haitian-born Victorie Desgraves; and self-righteous Brighton-born Letitia Price. Together they learn the magical process of capturing in silver the linguistic nuances lost in translation--and along the way uncover the process's ties to imperialism. This brilliant, ambitious concept falters in execution, reading more like a postcolonial social history than a proper novel. The narrative is frequently interrupted by lectures on why imperialism is bad, not trusting the reader or the plot itself enough to know that this message will be clear from the events as they unfold. Kuang assumes an audience that disagrees with her, and the result keeps readers who are already aware of the evils of racism and empire at arm's length. The characters, meanwhile, often feel dubiously motivated. Readers will be drawn in by the fascinating, linguistic magic system and righteous stance, but many will come away frustrated. Agent: Hannah Bowman, Liza Dawson Associates. (Aug.)
Guardian Review
Welcome to Babel: the great Oxford translation institute in an alternative version of Victorian England, where translators hold the keys to the British empire. Every device and engineering technique there is, from steam trains to the foundations of buildings, relies on silver bars enchanted with "match pairs"; words in two different languages that mean similar things, but with a significant gap between them. The bars create the effect of the difference: feelings, noises, speed, stability, colour, even death. The magic comes from "that sublime, unnameable place where meaning [is] created". Bright children are taken from all corners of the empire, fluent in Chinese or Arabic, raised in England, and put to work at Babel to translate, thus finding new match pairs and making new magic - only ever used for the benefit of the rich in London, and to the detriment of those the translators must leave behind in their colonised homelands. We follow Robin Swift from his earliest childhood in China, through his time at Babel, and from his hope that translation is a way to bring people together, to the terrible realisation that, in this colonial framework, "an act of translation is an act of betrayal". If it sounds complicated, that's because it is. This is a scholarly book by a superb scholar - Kuang is a translator herself. The pages are heavy with footnotes; not the more usual whimsical ones, in the style of Susanna Clarke or Terry Pratchett, but academic notes, hectoring and preachy in a parody of the 19th-century tomes Swift and his friends at Oxford must study. The characters' conversation flies from theories of translation to quotations from Sanskrit, from Dryden to the authors of the Shijing; they are pretentious, but vulnerable too, and the balance is lovely. The fantastical elements underpin real history, rather than alter it; silver magic is what makes everything happen, and the grandest event it causes here - the fulcrum on which the novel turns - is the first opium war. The British empire is endlessly hungry for more silver and, in order to get it, becomes a huge drugs cartel, growing poppies in India and forcing China to buy opium. The young Babel translators become hopelessly tangled in the problem of whether to serve the corrupt institute that has given them opportunity and education, or their own people. This is not at all a far cry from Kuang's acclaimed Poppy War trilogy, based on 20th-century Chinese history, and so fans will be in familiar territory. Even against a whole background of clever things, the triumph here is the narrator. Swift is a complicated man. Born into poverty in China but raised by a wealthy father in England, he embodies all kinds of contradictions. On one hand, he's an overprivileged, middle-class Hamletty brat whose headaches are always worse than anyone else's. It comes as a revelation to him that working-class people have a hard time, because he doesn't know any. But he is also brave, and noble, and endlessly willing to have his worst side policed by his friends. He's a little boy who decides that his father's housekeeper's scones are "the Platonic ideal of bread". He's a naive student so shocked by the unfairness of the world behind all his money and his university that he struggles to see how to live in it. Like a set of dangerous silver match pairs, these contradictions can never quite translate each other, and they have explosive results. This is a grim and harrowing novel; many of the characters have poisonous opinions about race, and Swift becomes increasingly embittered. The antagonists are closer to demons than humans, with no nuance, and they do sickening things. Often the allure of fantasy is escape from the real world, but there's no escape here; Kuang's use of the genre does not soften real history but sharpens it. Babel asks what people from colonised countries are supposed to do when they reach positions of power - while being set in a time and place where reaching those positions would, in the real world, have been impossible. It is a fantastically made work, moving and enraging by turns, with an ending to blow down walls.
Kirkus Review
Can the British Empire, built on the power of foreign languages and magic, maintain its grip on the globe? In 1829, professor Richard Lovell brings a young Chinese boy now known as Robin Swift from his home in Canton to England. Saved from the cholera outbreak that claimed the rest of his family, Robin has the chance to begin a new, comfortable life at professor Lovell's estate. In exchange for food and lodging, he will spend years studying Latin, Greek, and Mandarin to prepare himself to enter Oxford's Royal Institute of Translation, known as Babel. In Oxford, Robin meets other students who are not so different from him: young people brought to England from other countries to maintain the empire. Britain has built its power upon silver bars and the magical powers imparted to them by translation, but in order to maintain that power, Britain needs foreigners and their languages. Though Robin and his friends are met with racism, they also find true joy in their studies and the heady business of translation. Soon, Robin learns of the secretive Hermes Society, a group working against the hegemony of the Royal Institute of Translation. As Robin's studies continue, he begins to question the colonial machine from which he can't seem to break free. Kuang draws a keen parallel between extracting knowledge and extracting resources, examining the terrible power of systems built on inequality and the uncomfortable experiences of the marginalized within those systems, whether due to race or gender. While occasionally hampered by rather self-aware critiques of colonialism, in general this is an expansive, sympathetic, and nevertheless scathing critique of Western imperialism and how individuals are forced to make their peace with the system and survive or to fight back and face the consequences. It's ambitious and powerful while displaying a deep love of language and literature. Dark academia as it should be. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Kuang follows her award-winning Poppy War trilogy with an engaging fantasy about the magic of language. Her richly descriptive stand-alone novel about an ever-expanding, alternate-world empire powered by magically enhanced silver talismans scrutinizes linguistics, history, politics, and the social customs of Victorian-era Great Britain. Professor Richard Lovell, an expert in Asiatic languages, brings a young Chinese orphan home from Macau for the specific purpose of raising and training him to be a student at the Royal Institute of Translation, Oxford University's prized educational tower of Babel and storage vault for the largest supply of silver in the world. Although able to pass for white, Robin Swift comes to understand he will never be fully accepted into English society. But over time he becomes content with the comfortable life provided by the professor and his Oxford scholarship. Then one evening he stumbles across a group stealing from Babel--a group whose leader has a face exactly like his own. This encounter changes Robin as he learns of his own purpose in the insidiousness behind Babel and its ties to the expansionist designs of the British Empire. Fans of in-depth historical fantasy will be delighted with Kuang's latest.
Library Journal Review
Kuang (The Burning God) is no stranger to tackling difficult topics. Her latest is set at a time of immense change and turmoil in a reimagined 1800s Britain. It tells the story of the Industrial Revolution and colonialism from the perspective of Robin, an orphaned Chinese boy who grows up as a ward in the home of an influential white professor who refuses to acknowledge him and holds racist views of other cultures. Robin is trained in multiple languages to prepare him for admittance to Babel, the prestigious program at Oxford for the empire's translators. The best "Babblers" can use silver, along with their translations, as tools to power the machines and ships that keep the empire running. This alternate 19th-century Britain differs from our own, but the societal issues remain the same. While absorbing, this is not always an easy read, as it is grim and dense, filled with explanations of etymology and footnotes. The idea to use a separate narrator (Billie Fulford-Brown) to narrate the footnotes is ingenious, enhancing main narrator Chris Lew Kum Hoi's phenomenal performance and making for a wonderful listening experience. VERDICT Sure to please fantasy readers. Order this unique and absorbing book in all formats.--Ammi Bui
