Review:
Babel, by R.F. Kuang
| Publisher: |
Harper Voyage |
| Copyright: |
August 2022 |
| ISBN: |
0-06-302144-7 |
| Format: |
Kindle |
| Pages: |
544 |
Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford
Translators' Revolution, to give it its full title, is a standalone
dark academia fantasy
set in the 1830s and 1840s, primarily in Oxford, England. The first book
of R.F. Kuang's previous trilogy,
The Poppy War, was nominated for
multiple awards and won the Compton Crook Award for best first novel.
Babel is her fourth book.
Robin Swift, although that was not his name at the time, was born and
raised in Canton and educated by an inexplicable English tutor his family
could not have afforded. After his entire family dies of cholera, he is
plucked from China by a British professor and offered a life in England as
his ward. What follows is a paradise of books, a hell of relentless and
demanding instruction, and an unpredictably abusive emotional environment,
all aiming him towards admission to Oxford University. Robin will join
University College and the Royal Institute of Translation.
The politics of this imperial Britain are almost precisely the same as in
our history, but one of the engines is profoundly different. This world
has magic. If words from two different languages are engraved on a metal
bar (silver is best), the meaning and nuance lost in translation becomes
magical power. With a careful choice of translation pairs, and sometimes
additional help from other related words and techniques, the silver bar
becomes a persistent spell. Britain's industrial revolution is in
overdrive thanks to the country's vast stores of silver and the applied
translation prowess of Babel.
This means Babel is also the only part of very racist Oxford that accepts
non-white students and women. They need translators (barely) more than
they care about maintaining social hierarchy; translation pairs only work
when the translator is fluent in both languages. The magic is also
stronger when meanings are more distinct, which is creating serious
worries about classical and European languages. Those are still the bulk
of Babel's work, but increased trade and communication within Europe is
eroding the meaning distinctions and thus the amount of magical power.
More remote languages, such as Chinese and Urdu, are full of untapped
promise that Britain's colonial empire wants to capture. Professor
Lowell, Robin's dubious benefactor, is a specialist in Chinese languages;
Robin is a potential tool for his plans.
As Robin discovers shortly after arriving in Oxford, he is not the first
of Lowell's tools. His predecessor turned against Babel and is trying to
break its chokehold on translation magic. He wants Robin to help.
This is one of those books that is hard to review because it does some
things exceptionally well and other things that did not work for me. It's
not obvious if the latter are flaws in the book or a mismatch between book
and reader (or, frankly, flaws in the reader). I'll try to explain as
best I can so that you can draw your own conclusions.
First, this is one of the all-time great magical system hooks. The way
words are tapped for power is fully fleshed out and exceptionally
well-done. Kuang is a professional translator, which shows in the
attention to detail on translation pairs. I think this is the
best-constructed and explained word-based magic system I've read in
fantasy. Many word-based systems treat magic as its own separate language
that is weirdly universal. Here, Kuang does the exact opposite, and the
result is immensely satisfying.
A fantasy reader may expect exploration of this magic system to be the
primary point of the book, however, and this is not the case. It is an
important part of the book, and its implications are essential to the plot
resolution, but this is not the type of fantasy novel where the plot is
driven by character exploration of the magic system. The magic system
exists, the characters use it, and we do get some crunchy details, but the
heart of the book is elsewhere. If you were expecting the typical
relationship of a fantasy novel to its magic system, you may get a bit
wrong-footed.
Similarly, this is historical fantasy, but it is the type of historical
fantasy where the existence of magic causes no significant differences.
For some people, this is a pet peeve; personally, I don't mind that choice
in the abstract, but some of the specifics bugged me.
The villains of this book assert that any country could have done what
Britain did in developing translation magic, and thus their hoarding of it
is not immoral. They are obviously partly lying (this is a classic
justification for imperialism), but it's not clear from the book how they
are lying. Technologies (and magic here works like a technology) tend to
concentrate power when they require significant capital investment, and
tend to dilute power when they are portable and easy to teach.
Translation magic feels like the latter, but its effect in the book is
clearly the former, and I was never sure why.
England is not an obvious choice to be a translation superpower. Yes,
it's a colonial empire, but India, southeast Asia, and most certainly
Africa (the continent largely not appearing in this book) are home to
considerably more languages from more wildly disparate families than
western Europe. Translation is not a peculiarly European idea, and this
magic system does not seem hard to stumble across. It's not clear why
England, and Oxford in particular, is so dramatically far ahead. There is
some sign that Babel is keeping the mechanics of translation magic secret,
but that secret has leaked, seems easy to develop independently, and is
simple enough that a new student can perform basic magic with a few hours
of instruction. This does not feel like the kind of power that would be
easy to concentrate, let alone to the extreme extent required by the last
quarter of this book.
The demand for silver as a base material for translation magic provides a
justification for mercantilism that avoids the confusing complexities of
currency economics in our actual history, so fine, I guess, but it was a
bit disappointing for this great of an idea for a magic system to have
this small of an impact on politics.
I'll come to the actual thrust of this book in a moment, but first
something else
Babel does exceptionally well: dark academia.
The remainder of Robin's cohort at Oxford is Remy, a dark-skinned Muslim
from Calcutta; Victoire, a Haitian woman raised in France; and Letty, the
daughter of a British admiral. All of them are non-white except Letty,
and Letty and Victoire additionally have to deal with the blatant sexism
of the time. (For example, they have to live several miles from Oxford
because women living near the college would be a "distraction.")
The interpersonal dynamics between the four are exceptionally well done.
Kuang captures the dislocation of going away to college, the unsettled
life upheaval that makes it both easy and vital to form suddenly tight
friendships, and the way that the immense pressure from classes and exams
leaves one so devoid of spare emotional capacity that those friendships
become both unbreakable and badly strained. Robin and Remy almost
immediately become inseparable in that type of college friendship in which
profound trust and constant companionship happen first and learning about
the other person happens afterwards.
It's tricky to talk about this without spoilers, but one of the things
Kuang sets up with this friend group is a pointed look at
intersectionality.
Babel has gotten a lot of positive review buzz,
and I think this is one of the reasons why. Kuang does not pass over or
make excuses for characters in a place where many other books do. This
mostly worked for me, but with a substantial caveat that I think you may
want to be aware of before you dive into this book.
Babel is set in the 1830s, but it is very much about the politics
of 2022. That does not necessarily mean that the politics are off for the
1830s; I haven't done the research to know, and it's possible I'm seeing
the Tiffany problem (Jo Walton's observation that Tiffany is a historical
12th century women's name, but an author can't use it as a medieval name
because readers think it sounds too modern). But I found it hard to shake
the feeling that the characters make sense of their world using modern
analytical frameworks of imperialism, racism, sexism, and intersectional
feminism, although without using modern terminology, and characters from
the 1830s would react somewhat differently. This is a valid authorial
choice; all books are written for the readers of the time when they're
published. But as with magical systems that don't change history, it's a
pet peeve for some readers. If that's you, be aware that's the feel I got
from it.
The true center of this book is not the magic system or the history. It's
advertised directly in the title the necessity of violence although
it's not until well into the book before the reader knows what that means.
This is a book about revolution, what revolution means, what decisions you
have to make along the way, how the personal affects the political, and
the inadequacy of reform politics. It is hard, uncomfortable, and not
gentle on its characters.
The last quarter of this book was exceptional, and I understand why it's
getting so much attention. Kuang directly confronts the desire for
someone else to do the necessary work, the hope that surely the people
with power will see reason, and the feeling of despair when there are no
good plans and every reason to wait and do nothing when atrocities are
about to happen. If you are familiar with radical politics, these aren't
new questions, but this is not the sort of thing that normally shows up in
fantasy. It does not surprise me that
Babel struck a nerve with
readers a generation or two younger than me. It captures that heady
feeling on the cusp of adulthood when everything is in flux and one is
assembling an independent politics for the first time. Once I neared the
end of the book, I could not put it down. The ending is brutal, but I
think it was the right ending for this book.
There are two things, though, that I did not like about the political arc.
The first is that Victoire is a much more interesting character than
Robin, but is sidelined for most of the book. The difference of
perspectives between her and Robin is the heart of what makes the end of
this book so good, and I wish that had started 300 pages earlier. Or,
even better, I wish Victoire has been the protagonist; I liked Robin, but
he's a very predictable character for most of the book. Victoire is not;
even the conflicts she had earlier in the book, when she didn't get much
attention in the story, felt more dynamic and more thoughtful than Robin's
mix of guilt and anxiety.
The second is that I wish Kuang had shown more of Robin's intellectual
evolution. All of the pieces of why he makes the decisions that he does
are present in this book, and Kuang shows his emotional state (sometimes
in agonizing detail) at each step, but the sense-making, the development
of theory and ideology beneath the actions, is hinted at but not shown.
This is a stylistic choice with no one right answer, but it felt odd
because so much of the rest of the plot is obvious and telegraphed. If
the reader shares Robin's perspective, I think it's easy to fill in the
gaps, but it felt odd to read Robin giving clearly thought-out political
analyses at the end of the book without seeing the hashing-out and
argument with friends required to develop those analyses. I felt like I
had to do a lot of heavy lifting as the reader, work that I wish had been
done directly by the book.
My final note about this book is that I found much of it extremely
predictable. I think that's part of why reviewers describe it as
accessible and easy to read; accessibility and predictability can be two
sides of the same coin. Kuang did not intend for this book to be subtle,
and I think that's part of the appeal. But very few of Robin's actions
for the first three-quarters of the book surprised me, and that's not
always the reading experience I want. The end of the book is different,
and I therefore found it much more gripping, but it takes a while to get
there.
Babel is, for better or worse, the type of fantasy where the
politics, economics, and magic system exist primarily to justify the plot
the author wanted. I don't think the societal position of the Institute
of Translation that makes the ending possible is that believable given the
nature of the technology in question and the politics of the time, and if
you are inclined to dig into the specifics of the world-building, I think
you will find it frustrating. Where it succeeds brilliantly is in
capturing the social dynamics of hothouse academic cohorts, and in making
a sharp and unfortunately timely argument about the role of violence in
political change, in a way that the traditionally conservative setting of
fantasy rarely does.
I can't say
Babel blew me away, but I can see why others liked it
so much. If I had to guess, I'd say that the closer one is in age to the
characters in the book and to that moment of political identity
construction, the more it's likely to appeal.
Rating: 7 out of 10
About a week back Jio launched a laptop called JioBook that will be manufactured in China
Unlike the Americans who chose the path to have more competition, we have chosen the path to have more monopolies. So even though, I very much liked Louis es project sooner or later finding the devices itself would be hard. While the recent notification is for laptops, what stops them from doing the same with mobiles or even desktop systems. As it is, both smartphones as well as desktop systems has been contracting since last year as food inflation has gone up.
Add to that availability of products has been made scarce (whether by design or not, unknown.) The end result, the latest processor launched overseas becomes the new thing here 3-4 years later. And that was before this notification. This will only decrease competition and make Ambanis rich at cost of everyone else. So much for east of doing business . Also the backlash has been pretty much been tepid. So what I shared will probably happen again sooner or later.
The only interesting thing is that it s based on Android, probably in part due to the issues people seeing in both Windows 10, 11 and whatnot.
Till later.
Update :- The print tried a decluttering but instead cluttered the topic. While what he shared all was true, and certainly it is a step backwards but he didn t need to show how most Indians had to go to RBI for the same. I remember my Mamaji doing the same and sharing afterwards that all he had was $100 for a day which while being a big sum was paltry if you were staying in a hotel and were there for company business. He survived on bananas and whatver cheap veg. he could find then. This is almost 35-40 odd years ago. As shared the Govt. has been doing missteps for quite sometime now. The print does try to take a balanced take so it doesn t run counter of the Government but even it knows that this is a bad take. The whole thing about security is just laughable, did they wake up after 9 years. And now in its own wisdom it apparently has shifted the ban instead from now to 3 months afterwards. Of course, most people on the right just applauding without understanding the complexities and implications of the same. Vendors like Samsung and Apple who have made assembly operations would do a double-think and shift to Taiwan, Vietnam, Mexico anywhere. Global money follows global trends. And such missteps do not help 
Since some time I ve been thinking about making myself a top or a dress with a wide gathered neckline that can be work at different widths, including off-the-shoulders.
A few years ago I ve been gifted a cut of nice, thin white fabric with a print of lines and lozenges that isn t uniform along the fabric, but looks like it was designed for some specific garment, and it was waiting in my stash for a suitable pattern.
And a few days ago, during a Sunday lunch, there was an off-hand mention of a dress from the late 1970s which had an elastic in the neckline, so that it could be optionally worn off-the-shoulders.
And something snapped in place.
I had plans for that afternoon, but they were scrapped, and I started to draw, measure, cut rectangles of fabric, pin and measure again, cut more fabric.
The part of the fabric with large vertical stripes had two different widths: I could have made the back narrower, but I decided to just keep a strip with narrower lines to one side.
The fabric also didn t have a full second strip of lozenges, so I had to hem it halfway through it.
The casing for the elastic was pieced from various scraps, but at least I was able to match the lines on the center front and back, even if they are different. Not that it matters a lot, since it s all hidden in the gathering, but I would have known.
And since I was working on something definitely modern, even if made out of squares and rectangles, of course I decided to hand-sew everything, mostly to be able to use quite small sewing allowances, since the fabric was pretty thin.
In my stash I had a piece of swimsuit elastic that feels nice, looks nice and makes a knot that doesn t slip, so I used it. It s a perfect match, except for the neon yellow colour, which I do like, but maybe is a bit too high visibility? I will see if the haberdasher has the same elastic in dark blue, but right now this will do.
It was a quick project anyway: by the end of the working week the top was finished; I think that on a sewing machine it would be easy to make it in a day.
And it can be worn off the shoulders! Which is something I will probably never do in public (and definitely not outdoors), but now if I wanted I could! :D
As usual, the pattern (for what pattern there is) and instructions are 
This post describes how to deploy 
One of my earlier Slackware install disk sets, kept for nostalgic reasons.
I use a LUKS-encrypted USB stick to store my GPG and SSH keys, which acts as a
backup and portable key setup when working on different laptops. One
inconvenience with LUKS-encrypted USB sticks is that you need to enter the
password every time you want to mount the device, either through a Window
Manager like KDE or using the cryptsetup luksOpen command. Fortunately, many
laptops nowadays come equipped with TPM2 modules, which can be utilized to
automatically decrypt the device and subsequently mount it. In this post, we'll
explore the usage of systemd-cryptenroll for this purpose, along with udev
rules and a set of scripts to automate the mounting of the encrypted USB.
First, ensure that your device has a TPM2 module. You can run the following
command to check:
Version 0.0.13 of 
These instructions are for qotom devices 
Did you follow the instructions linked above in the prerequisites section? If not, take a moment to do so now.
You may be warned that Rufus will be acting as dd.
Don t forget to select the USB drive that you want to write the image to. In my example, the device is creatively called NO_LABEL .
You may be warned that re-imaging the USB disk will result in the previous data on the USB disk being lost.
Once the process is complete, the application will indicate that it is complete.
You should now have a USB disk with the Proxmox installer image on it. Place the USB disk into one of the blue, USB-3.0, USB-A slots on the Qotom device so that the system can read the installer image from it at full speed. The Proxmox installer requires a keyboard, video and mouse. Please attach these to the device along with inserting the USB disk you just created.
Press the power button on the Qotom device. Press the F11 key repeatedly until you see the AMI BIOS menu. Press F11 a couple more times. You ll be presented with a boot menu. One of the options will launch the Proxmox installer. By trial and error, I found that the correct boot menu option was UEFI OS
Once you select the correct option, you will be presented with a menu that looks like this. Select the default option and install.
During the install, you will be presented with an option of the block device to install to. I think there s only a single block device in this celeron, but if there are more than one, I prefer the smaller one for the ProxMox OS. I also make a point to limit the size of the root filesystem to 16G. I think it will take up the entire volume group if you don t set a limit.
Okay, I ll do another install and select the correct filesystem.
If you read this far and want me to add some more screenshots and better instructions, leave a comment.
