Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translator’s Revolution By R.F. Kuang

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR BABEL FOLLOW

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translator’s Revolution is one of the most popular fantasy novels of the last two years, and has the distinction of having one of the longest and most bizarrely structured titles as well. It is described as being dark academia in style, a new term used to describe a certain aesthetic akin to Harry Potter’s Hogwarts.

Written by an academic who has lived the scholarly life pursuing graduate degree after graduate degree, it comes from an authoritative source. R.F. Kuang is also a successful fantasy author bringing an intriguing combination.

Babel is about Robin Swift, an orphan born in Canton and brought to England by his English father to become a translator. The world is an alternate history set in 1830s, where a magical combination of match-pairs or words engraved in silver produce powerful enhanced effects.

Robin learns of a world running on silver, all managed from a tower in Oxford called Babel. There the British Empire’s best translators work on creating new effects using foreign languages, do extensive research, and also maintaining the existing silver infrastructure like glorified mechanics.

My first reaction was that this must be one of the author’s power fantasies. Her own academic background is similar to what Robin is studying, which would make her extremely important in the fantasy world she built.

Robin learns of the oppression and fundamentally unjust nature of the British Empire in its treatment of the colonies. He also learns all British people are horribly racist. His moral concerns of his work and inner anger toward the Empire clashes with the comfortable life he has been given to him by the colonizers.

It is a kind of golden handcuffs. Only Robin has zero options. His father told him his entire family was dead. It may be true but he doesn’t seek out his family or his people on his trip to Canton. In fact, he seems to feel almost no connection to his own country. Other than the language, he doesn’t seem interested in learning more or seeing anything other than an opium den.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

For most of the book Robin feels like he has no options. There is no life for him outside of Babel.It is a bit questionable that someone like Robin would truly have no alternatives. His knowledge and skills are extremely valuable. Even if a legal monopoly existed, like the East India Company of that time, there would still be jobs, as there were for anyone who worked for the historical East India Company.

His lack of agency largely directs him down an almost inevitable path to violence. In sum, Babel is the tragic story of a young man forced to do the unthinkable by an unjust world. He watches as those he loves are killed around him. Left with only his hatred and desire for revenge, he destroys Babel Tower presumably crippling the British Empire.

His character arc is a slow developing tragedy that speeds up in the last fifth of the novel. He learns and sees more as time passes but he doesn’t change much. His friends are all likable and reasonably well developed, creating a dynamic that is a college-age version of Harry, Weasley and Hermione.

Robin is a likable, sympathetic protagonist but the world largely pushes him around and forces him on a trajectory toward violence. It never felt like he organically or internally reached this end. A character lacking in choice really doesn’t face the same conflict as those with agency.

This leads us to my biggest criticism of the story: the one-dimensional villains. It is not just the characters but the whole world that is the villain. The actions of the antagonist dictates the plot. Unfortunately, the antagonist is an underdeveloped straw man. They are vicious, cruel, and deeply racist members of the British elite all the way down to the students of Oxford.

Professor Lovell and just about every British character is ignorant, making casual racist comments, seeing the Chinese and other peoples from their colonies as inferior. They drop offensive terms, overtly insult the foreign-born students, harass them—sexually in one scene—in a way that is outrageous, and irredeemable. The narrator criticizes them directly throughout, sending a few offensive and dehumanizing comments in their direction.

It is troubling how much effort the author put into dehumanizing virtually every white character in this novel. If the races were swapped, readers and critics would instantly accuse it of being a work of hate.

The novel also possesses a surprising amount of political and social commentary on Victorian England (an alternate version at that). The novel far to intensely critique everything British: the food, the schools, the mercantilist economy, and the cruelty of the elites. In one instance, Robin’s brother Griffin claims the British did not abolish slavery out of the goodness of their heart but out of cynical political calculation. Even one of their great acts of liberation is torn down.

It reads like a kind of political commentary but this is an alternate history set two centuries ago. To think, people two centuries ago said and did things that are problematic today…shocking!

Taking a step back, I kept asking why write a story like this? Why spend considerable time describing the awfulness of a fictional British Empire of the 1830s? Given the level of detail and references to real historical events, the only conclusion I could reach is that this is a thinly-veiled attack on what the author considers pro-British revisionist history taught today.

I do not know what they teach in school now but almost everything the characters discuss about non-fanciful British history was taught to me in high school and college. Perhaps it is different in the UK but it is a straw man to suggest there is a widely-held view the British Empire of the 19th century being one of angels.

Turning back to the story: the disturbing experiences builds up a justification for Robin’s actions. His actions at the end are acts of terrorism. This is the second recent novel I’ve read that has presented its protagonist as heroic or justified when committing criminal acts. This moral underpinning for the story and others like Naomi Alderman’s The Future, is disturbing.

The lead up to the climax is set in motion when Robin murders his father. If it were brought to Court today, he would be convicted of voluntary manslaughter or a similar lower degree act of homicide. He would not be able to present any affirmative defense for his act, such as self-defense. Rather than acknowledge the violent crime that occurred, his friend Ramy celebrates it saying “Robin killed him” cheerily.

Later, Robin and members of the secret Hermes Society justify their actions by arguing the British Empire has committed many horrible crimes against their respective peoples, that Professor Lovell was conspiring to start a war with China to open it to opium trade. These are awful things but none justify specific acts of murder, certainly not random acts of murder as Robin does commit at the end of the novel.

This is the one disturbing thing Babel and The Future have in common, they seem to think broader systemic injustices somehow justify their individual acts of violence. If accepted, this opens the door to atrocities unimaginable. If you are able to justify violence to right a social or historical wrong, there really isn’t much you cannot do in achieving your justice.

Except, revenge is not justice. This is something Victoire tries to argue to Robin but only succeeds to reducing the scale of their terrorist acts. Robin and Victoire do have political objectives but both admit their plan has no real chance to achieve them.

One perspective is to see Babel as a story of how people are driven over the edge. If so, the novel is indeed about terrorism but carefully avoids exploring the morality with much enthusiasm. Instead, the epilogue revisits Victoire’s background and crimes of Europeans against her and her family, which seems to just support the necessity of violence or a justification for whatever she does next. That doesn’t explore the morality of her actions, it affirms them.

It is notable the death and destruction wrought by her actions are limited to certain disasters in Oxford, not the calamities elsewhere that likely killed dozens, if not hundreds. It is mostly abstract and outweighed by the large amounts of specific evidence of the crimes of the British Empire.

When contemplating the necessity of violence in this alternate history with silver magic, the world-building and straw men villains all act to create that necessity. Since the author built this world intentionally for that purpose, it isn’t compelling. It is more of a revenge fantasy.

A few world-building criticisms: the dialogue did not feel authentic to the early 19th century. The characters seem to use modern phrases you’d hear on campuses today. The narrator refers to fellow students as “white boys” and Professor Lovell as a “colonizer.” Terms like narco-military state, privilege, and a brief discussion on affirmative action are present in this story set in the 1830s.

Babel Tower supposedly has a massive store of silver. The most important silver bars and match-pairs are created and maintained there, a single location in a global empire. It isn’t protected by the government in any way, despite being repeatedly attacked. The painful dependence on a single tower in Oxford for the running of the whole economy strains credulity.

Source: Money Metals Exchange website

The global supply of silver today is roughly 1 billion ounces (quick Google search on the question, don’t quote me). Let’s assume the global supply of silver in the 1830s was 1 percent of that or 10 million ounces (over 300 tons). The author expects us to believe a significant amount of that supply is in a single tower in Oxford. How much could it possibly store? Also, there is zero chance the Crown, Parliament, or any government anywhere would allow that mass to be stored on a unsecured college campus.

Indeed, the author acknowledges the curious structure of her own fantasy world:

How slender, how fragile, the foundations of an empire. Take away the centre, and what’s left? A gasping periphery, baseless, powerless, cut down at the roots. (page 469 in my ebook version)

I agree. The British Empire depicted in this fantasy alternate history is painfully dependent on one center. Except, it is a fantasy world. If this was intended as a thinly-veiled historical commentary, it fails. The British Empire of the early 19th century was not this fragile. It endured for another century until collapsing after WWII.

At the basic fiction-writing level, the prose is excellent with a plot that flows well for most of the novel. Some of the descriptions were strong. It would not fair well if it were a historical fiction novel in that respect but does well for a fantasy novel. Robin’s friends are compelling characters, and he is at times as well. The other characters are not. Many are effectively dehumanized.

The commercial success and critical acclaim of Babel are impressive. Perhaps readers recognize the moral relativity and representation of terrorism, appreciating its vivid portrayal of such disturbing justifications. In the few reviews I have read, that is not the case. Some appear to sympathize with Robin and appreciate the stark depiction of the mighty British Empire and its flaws. It is possible I simply did not read enough reviews.

This is a book of its time, representing the historical view of many today but it is not a great story and has a troubling moral relativity to it.