Thoughts on Babel, by R.F.Kuang
My first substack post. Thought I would do something positive and appreciative.
“…there is no such thing as humane colonization.”
To a great extent, the reaction of a reader to RF Kuang’s fantastical novel depends on their reaction to this quote. As someone who unquestionably benefits from the legacy of empire, but deplores its systematic cruelty, I found it enlightening, at times exciting, but deeply uncomfortable reading. I thoroughly recommend the experience.
The novel begins in 1830, and follows the fortunes of a Cantonese boy, given the name Robin Swift by his English guardian, who has plucked Robin from his mother's deathbed. This guardian, Professor Lovell, brings Robin to England, and subjects him to an adolescence of material comfort but emotional starvation. At the end of this process Robin is conveyed to Babel, the institute of translation in Oxford, there to study and tame language for the greater glory of the Empire.
Here Kuang adds her one fantastical flourish. There is magic in this world, captured in silver by the shades of meaning between languages. It's worth pausing to appreciate just how brilliant this conceit is- it allows her to explore an obvious interest in etymology, while serving as a metaphor for the way in which colonialism extracts not just material wealth but culture, even down to language, from those it engulfs. Robin is set to work using the differences in meaning between Chinese and English terms to power a hegemony which is even greater in this book than that enjoyed by the British crown in the ‘real’ 1830s.
And here is another point that I loved about the book. The Empire of Babel is an exaggerated caricature of the British Empire, but only just. The book turns on a particularly lamentable real-life policy (and I think you will be able to guess which), and is littered with notes and asides, pointing out in lucid prose the evils and hypocrisy of this real colonial system.
All the English (white) characters in the novel are, to a great or lesser extent, corrupted by this system. It is not that they are evil per se, in the manner of Tolkien’s Orcs, but they are all compromised, and the closer they are to the nexus of Imperial power, the less decency they display. Non-white characters, by contrast, are fundamentally decent and uncorrupted, albeit each in different ways. I think it is this rather simplistic contrast that has led some reviewers to accuse this book of racism. Certainly there is little sophistication in the contrasting of white and non-white characters, to the extent that some feel like they stand in for particular ideas (pacifism, violent resistance, mercantilism) rather as than fully fledged characters. But rather than think of this as racist, a better comparison is with the treatment of religion in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Here, as in Pullman’s work, it is the system rather than the people which is condemned. And so it is helpful to think of Babel as an imperial allegory, and its fantastical elements as emphasising the complicity of academia in political power.
All of which makes it sound a lot less fun that it is. The central characters, in contrast to the more peripheral allegorical ones, are vividly drawn and intensely sympathetic. Kuang is not sentimental about them, however, and this gives particularly the second half of the book a sharpness and narrative drive which the relatively bucolic first half lacks. But of course we spent the first half of the book luxuriating in a richly and fascinatingly drawn picture of an alternative Oxford, so even at its slowest the book never drags.
I am not, up till this point, a book reviewer. But Babel has stimulated me to the extent that I have written a review. So even if you dislike my writing, it seems sensible to immerse yourself in RF Kuang's, and see what she stimulates in you.