Review of “Babel: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution” by R. F. Kuang

There are so many ways we are separated from others: class, race, gender, gender orientation, and expanding the lens yet wider, culture, history, and language. The poet Adrienne Rich, in her book The Dream of a Common Language, expressed frustration in her efforts to overcome the barriers just between two people in an intimate relationship. T.S. Eliot famously explored the same problem in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock when he lamented:

“And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
               “That is not it at all,
               That is not what I meant, at all.”

This book, historical fiction fantasy set in 1830s England, tackles both the microscopic and macroscopic dilemmas of understanding, focusing on the ways in which shared experiences have to pass through many lenses to impart a desired meaning.

The main characters in the story are students of the fictional Royal Institute of Translation, nicknamed Babel, part of the Oxford University campus in England. [As an article in Open Culture points out, “The Biblical story of the Tower of Babel had long been widely accepted, either literally or metaphorically, as indicative that all humans once spoke the same language, the so-called “Adamic Language.”]

Many of the themes of the book are revealed through the trope of lectures at the institute, such as in Professor Jerome Playfair’s introductory class to translation theory. He tells students about the age-old quest to find this Adamic Language, and how translators struggle with approximating “true” meaning:

“The first lesson any good translator internalizes is that there exists no one-to-one correlation between words or even concepts from one language to another. . . . That is the dilemma. Do we take words as our unit of translation, or do we subordinate accuracy of individual words to the overall spirit of the text?”

He avers:

“…translators do not so much deliver a message as they rewrite the original. And herein lies the difficulty – rewriting is still writing, and writing always reflects the author’s ideology and biases. . . . we must proceed from the starting assumption that distortion is inevitable.”

He discusses the different standards established for translation, such as faithfulness, fluency, and beauty. [These standards were set out by Lin Yutang in his book On Translation. Note, as Yutang points out, faithfulness is based on the “total image” rather than the literal meaning of a word, which is not possible. This is where “fidelity” comes in: an attempt to convey the implicated meaning of the text.]

Translation between languages isn’t the only hurdle. Often in the same language, meanings and intentions diverge, sometimes by subconscious cues that confer power on words (perhaps to a differentiated group of listeners) beyond the dictionary definition. [Hence the tendency by some political actors in current times to keep invoking “marxism” or “socialism” to cast aspersions on those to whom they are in opposition. The words have emotional resonance above and beyond their strict meaning, which very few seem to understand in any event.] In those instances, language becomes, as the sociologist Murray Edelman pointed out, “a sequence of Pavlovian cues rather than an instrument for reasoning and analysis. . . ” (The Symbolic Uses of Politics, p. 116). The cues can placate and mollify, or arouse anxiety or anger. The original meaning of the word is besides the point.

And in fact, the political use of words also is at play in this novel, in the role linguists at Babel play in helping to maintain and expand the British Empire. The characters engage in a great deal of debate on this matter, as each tries to win acceptance of a particular categorization of an issue from the standpoint of either the elites or the oppressed.

The students, who were discovered when children to have uncanny language abilities and then groomed for a future at Babel, were particularly situated to have conflicting views on the Empire and the ways and means of its colonization policies and practices. They included Robin Smith, from China;, Ramy Mirza, from India; Victoire Desgraves from Haiti; and Letty Price, “a white English rose.” Although Letty suffered along with Victoire for her gender, she never of course had to endure the multiple microaggressions in both society at large and in the Oxford community for being a person of color, as did the other three.

As the interactions of these four friends play out, we see first-hand how language is not only about grammar and vocabulary, which can supply their own ambiguities. It is also about nuance and culture, values and perceptions, and local and contemporary references. As Ramy said, “That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”

Besides the institution of Babel itself, another part of the fantasy aspect of the novel is the magic of silverworking, which is, as it turns out, requires a keen ear for language and is the ultimate goal for students at Babel to master. With a combination of words from different languages related in some way, members of the Institute inscribe silver bars, thus empowering them to yield a magic force based on the synergy between the meaning of the two words.

Babel’s silver bars, in this novel, have become a part of every modern process, from strengthening architectural structures, to making the sewers work, to helping gardens grow, and even helping to heal the sick. But their use is at the discretion of the Empire, which chooses who benefits from them, and charges for both their installation and maintenance. The rest of the world has become dependent on Britain for this magic, and in turn, Britain is dependent on outside sources for its silver. Here, Kuang interweaves the history of the Opium Wars with China, although the non-fantasy truth of the matter wasn’t much more savory than the fantasy twist. Even without the magic, as an explanation of the Opium Wars in the New York Times observes:

“. . . Britain’s industrial revolution was transforming the balance of global power in the early 19th century. It was not inevitable that Britons would use violence to exploit this, but the revolution constantly threw up situations where violence was an option.”

Industrial Revolution comes to Great Britain

A secret society called Hermes has been formed to resist the arbitrary control of silver by the Empire (enforced by its powerful navy), and to help the have-nots (mainly poor and people of color) who have been denied its benefits. But combating injustice, poverty, and hopelessness in an empire controlled by those with a vested interest in the establishment (whether because of monetary gain or ideological belief) is an uphill fight. Again, language is key: part of the battle is influencing the type of information disseminated to people and transforming their world views.


Can anyone outside of a government muster the resources to counter the conceptual manipulation and even disinformation that informs society? Can average citizens affect the prospects of a war over resources? These are the questions these Babel students attempt to find out.

Evaluation: This densely provocative novel would be fine fodder for a book club that is looking for plenty to think about and discuss. Those who aren’t into fantasy can ignore those aspects of the story; there is enough that is real and that is as true in 2023 as it would have been in the 1830s.

Note: Babel has won multiple awards, including Nebula Award for Best Novel 2022, Locus Award for Fantasy Novel 2023, and British Book Award for Fiction 2023, inter alia.

Rating: 5/5

Published by Harper Voyager, 2022