Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang is a 2022 historical fiction standalone novel. It tells the story of a fictional college in Oxford, Royal Institute of Translation, also known as Babel, which teaches its students the intricacies of translation. Its students are trained toward a few careers, including traditional diplomatic translators, researchers, and legal experts. The flashiest and narratively most important track is in silver-working.

In this world, etymological translation has a very real power that, when inscribed upon bars of silver, can cause tangible effects in the world by fusing the difference in definitions. These fictional qualities of silver turns this story that almost reaches the level of fantasy, though it never quite crosses the threshold. It takes the approach of showing highly advanced science as indivisible from magic, a trope that I am no small fan of. Silver-work is a complicated process, but I’ll do my best to explain it:

Because it’s reliant on translation, the process starts with a word whose meaning changes through its transformation across cultures. Arcane, from the book’s full title, is perhaps a good example. Imagine you have a book full of information that you want to keep secret and inaccessible. Arcane is used in modern English to describe something that is “understood by few; mysterious or secret.” If taken back to its Latin roots, arcere means “to shut up” and arca means “chest”. So, a silver-worker in Babel could inscribe arca/arcere, and arcane on a bar of silver, place it in the spine of a book, and the pages will be locked tight, unable to be opened and risk revealing the secret information within. There are more rules and limitations, but that’s the basic theory.

Side note: Arcane also has a modern connotation relating to magic, creating a double entendre in the title that makes the reader question whether the science at work is magic or not. 

It’s honestly a fascinating idea for a magic system. It utilizes the traditional concept of magic spell words in a fresh manner that, if you pay attention to the definitions at work, makes a satisfying amount of sense to the reader. Plus, as a habitual etymology-Googler, I was naturally inclined to follow the research of the characters.

Kuang uses this technology as a basis to discuss the effects of British colonialism in the Empire in the 1830s.

When the book takes place the Empire has spent decades expanding its influence in an effort to do two things: mine silver from its colonies and extract skilled linguists from their homelands. That’s where our main character comes in. He was born in Canton (now Guangzhou) amid the Asiatic Cholera Epidemic. His family was decimated and he only survived due to his adoption by a wealthy Babel professor. He receives his English name, Robin Swift; we never learn his Chinese name for the duration of the novel, thus serving a greater theme of anglicization.

As the book progresses, Robin discovers firsthand the effects of British colonialism on his homeland and the homes of his Oxford classmates. Everything culminates in an eventual return to Canton, wherein Robin plays an important role on behalf of the British in attempting to strongarm the Chinese into opening trade to British opium. He witnesses firsthand the racism, oppression, and dehumanization exhibited toward his people and concludes that he himself will never be seen truly as one of the British. This results in the revolution mentioned in the book’s title. 

There is a unique quirk of Babel’s silver-working that supports the themes of anti-colonialism. The silver bars will only work if the translated languages used are actively extant and practiced in the world. Accordingly, Babel’s researchers show this tug and pull as they try to balance their need for specific translations with the homogenization their own colonizing causes. The more the Empire spreads, the more languages die, and the more linguists they remove from their homes, the fewer translation options are available for the silver. This creates a tension that feels like a typical energy crisis felt by a nation.

Babel shines in its meticulous recreation of 1830s England. I certainly don’t intimately know the cultural history of Oxford, but it comes across clearly that Kuang does. The research she has put into depicting the world of Babel conveys the confidence of the author’s writing so vividly I know I can trust it as accurate. On occasion I did look up certain terms and locations to get more of a background; I was thrilled to find the exact location where Robin lived in Oxford in online images and even today it resembled the writing exactly. 

Robin meets up with his cohort at Oxford early in the story. The four of them, all told, make up a diverse group with only one of them hailing from England. Two of the cohort are women, and the two men and one of the women are visibly foreign to Oxford. Kuang goes to great lengths to show the prejudice felt by the characters in terms of race and gender. They slowly start to realize that no matter how much they prove themselves in academia they will always be seen as ‘other’.

The main star of Babel is Oxford itself, its many colleges and libraries, and the lives of its researchers.

This focus on school life is truly welcome. All too often, it seems like the actual ‘school’ part of academic settings is glossed over and the professors’ lectures are hardly ever featured. In this case, a significant portion of the book is devoted to long, drawn out lectures and academic dialogues that made me feel like I was sitting in the room myself listening to the instruction.

While Oxford was fascinating to explore, the worldbuilding in the greater Empire was puzzling. When I first picked it up, I expected to read an account of a world history that was massively altered by this translation technology that had been developed. It’s made clear that the entire infrastructure of the Empire would fail should the silver bars be removed. However, Kuang could effectively be telling a story of the actual history of colonialism because nothing is really different.

Babel occupies this strange space between historical fiction and historical fantasy. It’s not quite an alternate history, but neither is it fully in the realm of the real. 

Curiously, it doesn’t seem like any significant technologies were replaced or massively enhanced by the silver. There were whole sections where I forgot that the silver bars existed and was surprised when suddenly some borderline-magical effect was produced. Because of the sheer power of silver, I expected 1830s Britain to exhibit the technological prowess of a world decades in the future, at a minimum. That wasn’t the case. Instead, it became clear that it was just the historical British Empire with silver-working present but ultimately inconsequential to the plot until the climax. There was certainly a dichotomy to be felt between Oxford and Canton, but it was not dissimilar from what could be expected for the time in our own reality.

Where I feel the book falls flat is, unfortunately, at the very end. Babel ends with the titular revolution, though it takes the form of a worker’s strike in the college’s tower. The climax is almost entirely just the main characters watching the fallout of their strike unfold. Their weapon in this conflict is the restriction of resources that when withheld causes infrastructure to fall apart in the Empire. There is no antagonist beyond, I suppose, ‘the elite’ of Oxford and greater Britain. Robin himself makes some questionable choices and honestly goes through some inexplicable character development that sees him becoming a bit of a villain. He gives in to the simmering rage he has felt at the Empire and seems willing to bury every Englishman in misery to prove a point.

This climax doesn’t work, though, because that means one hundred pages of what should be the most exciting part of the story is devoted to the main characters (and, by proxy, the reader) literally sitting in a tower and reading about or being told what’s actually happening outside the walls. As I got to the last forty pages or so, I realized I was reading a newspaper relaying the events of the day. Pages would go by where Robin and the others wouldn’t do anything. They would spend their time moralizing while Robin descended into philosophical villainy. I held on, not least because I was five hundred pages in, but also because I was anticipating Robin emerging from his pessimism and using the power of Babel to directly enact some sort of revolution to remove the systems of power the novel has been criticizing.

In the end, they didn’t. They simply withhold the power of silver from the Empire, causing worldwide catastrophe, deaths, and untold suffering of the citizenry. The characters know they aren’t causing irreparable harm to the Empire as it will eventually pull itself out of the ashes. I found myself agreeing with this viewpoint as, again, the setting hadn’t established why the British Empire couldn’t revert to non-silver infrastructure. Instead of the triumphant revolution I was expecting, it had more of a feel of the characters at their wits’ end screaming “I’m taking you down with me” as they ran out of options.

Invoking the ‘Tower of Babel’ conjures the message of the British Empire reaching too high in its hubris to culturally dominate the world only to ultimately, spectacularly, fail. Robin fulfilled the biblical allusion by destroying the tower and perpetuating the suffering that the strike was causing. I was left disappointed and disillusioned by Robin’s moral failing. Further, I did not sympathize with the tragic plight of the strike our protagonists led. The British Empire would churn onwards, in spite of the pain of its citizens.

Additionally, because it’s impossible to read this book without thinking of the biblical Babel, I felt like the final climax, the destruction of the tower, was unearned. To me, this comes off as heavy-handed due to its predictability. If you know anything at all about the mythological origins of the word ‘Babel’, you could’ve guessed what would happen to the very literal tower on the cover of the novel from the first time you picked it up.

From the beginning I felt like I was looking at the completed image of a jigsaw on the box and connected all the puzzle pieces as I reached the final scenes. 

Even considering my faults with the Babel, the novel remains a valuable read. The slow burn story develops into a crescendo at the end of the second act that fully engrossed me in the writing. The climax unfortunately ends up dragging on too long for its own good and leaves me unsympathetic to the protagonists.

Though I feel it fails to choose whether to be either a fantasy or fully-developed alternate history, Babel’s greatest success is as an engrossing and well-researched examination of early- to mid-nineteenth century Britain and the effects of its colonialism, both at home and abroad. It examines the mindset of those who are assimilated into Western culture and yet are still ostracized. Kuang uses her mastery of linguistics and classical writing to develop a rich world in Oxford. I may have been disappointed in the ending, there are lessons on colonialism and complacency that felt eerily relevant to today’s conflicts.