Babel

Description

From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire. Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization. For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide… Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

First Sentence

By the time Professor Richard Lovell found his way through Canton’s narrow alleys to the faded address in his diary, the boy was the only one in the house left alive.

Subjects

Other Editions

• Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' RevolutionHarperCollins Publishers2022-01-01
• Babel : Or the Necessity of ViolenceCengage Gale2022-01-01
• Babel : Or the Necessity of ViolenceHarperCollins Publishers2022-01-01
• Babel : Or the Necessity of ViolenceHarperCollins Publishers2022-01-01
• Babel : Or the Necessity of ViolenceHarperCollins Publishers2022-01-01
• Babel: una historia arcanaEditorial Hidra2022-01-01