Review of Babel by R.F. Kuang

“This is how colonialism works. It convinces us that the fallout from resistance is entirely our fault, that the immoral choice is resistance itself rather than the circumstances that demanded it.”

— R.F. Kuang

Babel is a book I have been seeing everywhere for a hot minute online. I don’t have TikTok and don’t plan on downloading it anytime soon, but Babel has been consistently showing up on my Instagram feed and YouTube videos for at least a year.

I know I’m deep in the book hole because of how I am constantly looking for new things to read, but this book literally is one of the most shown books on my feed. I was not familiar with Kuang’s work beforehand, but I was intrigued by the premise so I joined the waitlist at my library for a copy of Babel.

I got it after about a month, and sat down to read it one Saturday night when I didn’t want to do homework.

I ended up reading it over the course of two days late at night, and I was genuinely impressed I managed to read through it that quickly because this book is the size of a dictionary. I usually don’t go for longer books because I think they run out of steam (and I do think Babel runs out of steam as it plummets towards its final arc), but I toughed it out for this one.

I did end up skipping a lot of the footnotes, because while I understand Kuang is trying to emulate an academic book, it inserts too much direct information in a way that doesn’t feel natural. She’s forcing info on the reader that tries to keep more world building going on when you don’t really need that context to understand the story.

Anyways, before I ramble too much, onwards with the review!

In late 1820s England, translation and magic lead to the severe impacts of colonialism.

Babel opens in Canton, where our protagonist, Robin, is the only survivor of cholera in his neighborhood. At this point, he isn’t named Robin, but when a British professor, known as Professor Lovell, breaks into his home and rescues him from the disease, utilizing silver bars brought from Britain, it’s going to change his life for the better. Robin chooses the name Robin Swift for himself when Lovell brings him to the United Kingdom, where he pays for the youth’s education and opportunities.

He’s training him in Ancient Greek and other languages in order for Robin to attend Babel at Oxford University, which is the Translation Institute.

And Robin does eventually get into Babel, achieving his life’s goals up until that point. We learn pretty early on that Lovell is actually Robin’s father, as the resemblance between them is uncanny, and Robin becomes friends with three members of his cohort: Ramy, who is from Calcutta, Victoire, who is from Haiti, and Letty, who is the daughter of a British general.

The three get swept up in life at the institute, studying a plethora of languages in order for them to utilize them with silver bars. The silver bars used by the British are the magical fantasy element: coded with the language of the user, they can be used for anything, whether complacency of slaves or a good harvest.

Only the wealthy elites have access to these bars, and when Robin accidently meets his brother, Griffin, that was cast out of Babel, he increasingly gets sucked into the underground world of Hermes. They’re enlisting him to bring out the silver bars from Babel to steal, as the wards prevent anyone except the students and professors of Babel from entering the tower.

The work that’s being done in the tower overtly is being used to maintain British colonial rule over the oppressed, and Robin, although he resists Griffin and actually tells him to go away for months at a time, is increasingly becoming disillusioned with this way of life.

Early in the novel, Lovell beats Robin for missing one of his lessons, and that early incident sets a precursor for their relationship. When Lovell finds out about Robin helping Griffin, it isn’t pretty. As the novel goes through their studies and life at Babel, we see the hardships they face as students, as well as how easily a student can be kicked out of the institute.

Robin, after a failed attempt to steal from the tower, discovers that Ramy and Victoire are in on the activities of Hermes, and he takes the blame for them, putting him on the hot seat for grilling by Lovell. The quartet are sent to Canton, which is facing the beginnings of the Opium Wars, and Robin further infuriates his father after a Chinese general blows up all their supplies of opium.

Victoire, Robin, and Ramy are increasingly against what the British are doing at this point, and commit to the cause of Hermes. Lovell is accidently killed by Robin after a confrontation in his cabin, and they toss his body over the side of the ship and try to act like everything is normal when they return to England.

But when they get back to England, they go through his papers and realize that the British are orchestrating a war in China, and that Lovell, and a lot of the professors, are in on the operations.

The three end up joining Hermes in the old library, where members of an older Babel cohort at gathered. The Old Library is then gunned down by troops, killing all of the older students, and Letty shows up. She chastises her former friends and their cause, then ends up shooting Ramy dead while in the Old Library.

Victoire and Robin escape with the help of Griffin, who dies in the process, and decide to take Babel hostage. In an anti climatic scene where they stand off with the white professors and students, only a few remain, largely from the Global South.

They hold siege on the tower, enacting mass movements from the workers laid off earlier in the novel, but when Robin comes up with the plan to collapse the Westminster Bridge in London, one of his beloved professors walks away and leaves their cause.

As the British close in on the tower and Oxford begins to fall apart due to the lack of silver maintenance, the group decides they need to blow up the tower, ending all of the research conducted and ultimately ending their lives with it.

Victoire flees before the tower goes down, and, in the ending chapter, talks about how she’s going to survive in the colonies, perhaps returning to Haiti before she’s caught herself by the tide of life.

Overall Thoughts

Babel sets itself up to be a history book of sorts, but I genuinely don’t think it works in that format. The footnotes feel like a bit much, and while I understand the author comes from a historian background, I don’t think the “Arcane History” part of the title is truly necessary.

I think the book itself tries to impose a lot of modern ideologies onto the characters—it feels like a book that would be released in 2022, and a lot of the language in itself doesn’t feel like it belongs in 1828, when the novel begins.

That made the novel easy to read in the way that it flows for modern audiences, but when you’re trying to dub it an arcane history, there needs to be a bit of a balance between the historical elements and the more contemporary aspects of the prose in itself. Kuang is such a good writer at the end of the day, and the worldbuilding is excellent.

But plot-wise, Babel just plummets towards its end really quickly, and although there was no way this was going to be happy at the end, it happens too quickly and without much cause or reasoning behind it before reaching that point. Letty is the perfect example of that—she says she loves her friends, but ends up shooting one of them dead.

There’s a bold statement with that action, but I think we needed more tension with her to reach that point versus one chapter centered on her perspective. It’s a fascinating book though. I enjoyed reading it, despite my critiques of the content.

Follow me on Instagram and Goodreads below.