“Babel: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution or The Necessity of Violence” by R.F. Kuang

Could this novel be called ahistorical fiction? It is a history of pre-Victorian England, the prelude to the Opium Wars, and a sci-fi thriller all wrapped into one. Despite its share of anti-colonial moralizing, it weaves a fast-paced tale centered around language, subjectivity, and translation. Not an easy task. This alternative history centers around the Translation Institute at Oxford. “I think the Literature Department are an indulgent lot…. See, the sad thing is, they could be the most dangerous scholars of them all, because they’re the ones who really understand languages—know how they live and breathe and how they can make our blood pump, or our skin prickle, with just a turn of phrase. But they’re too obsessed fiddling with their lovely images to bother with how all that living energy might be channeled into something far more powerful. I mean, of course, silver.”

In Kuang’s novel, the magic of translated pair words etched onto silver bars makes the British empire run. “Translation, from time immemorial, has been the facilitator of peace. Translation makes possible communication, which in turn makes possible the kind of diplomacy, trade, and cooperation between foreign peoples that brings wealth and prosperity to all.” But for the empire to rule, it has to constantly expropriate all the wealth and knowledge from her dominions. “The newest, most powerful bars in use rely on Chinese, Sanskrit, and Arabic to work, but you’ll count less than a thousand bars in the countries where those languages are spoken, and then only in the homes of the wealthy and powerful…. This is no accident; this is a deliberate exploitation of foreign culture and foreign resources. The professors like to pretend that the tower is a refuge for pure knowledge, that it sits above the mundane concerns of business and commerce, but it does not. It’s intricately tied to the business of colonialism. It is the business of colonialism.”

Robin, a Chinese orphan rescued by a British professor from his shack in Canton in the midst of a plague, lives squarely with a foot in both worlds. “He had become so good at holding two truths in his head at once. That he was an Englishman and 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. That he hated Babel, and wanted to live forever in its embrace. He had danced for years on the razor’s edge of these truths, had remained there as a means of survival, a way to cope, unable to accept either side fully because an unflinching examination of the truth was so frightening that the contradiction threatened to break him.” His half-brother, Griffin, forewarned, “You’re lost, brother. You’re a ship adrift, searching for familiar shores. I understand what you want. I sought it too. But there is no homeland. It’s gone.”