BABEL, An Arcane History

 'Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?'

'But that's the great contradiction of colonialism. ... It's built to destroy that which it prizes most.'

BABEL, An Arcane History, R.F. Kuang

It has long been a habit of mine, when stumbling upon writing that stands out from the dross of literature, to proceed through everything that writer has written. So it has been for me with R.F. Kuang, whose novel Yellowface I reviewed here at an earlier date.

I've just finished reading her long novel BABEL, An Arcane History. Babel, which of course refers back to the biblical Tower of Babel, becomes as well, in Kuang's hand, the all powerful, though fictional, school of translation at Oxford college in the 1830s. Students at Babel are tasked with wielding the power of words, and that power is employed in the transfer to silver, which, here, is not only the the coin of the realm but an element possessing magical potentialities brought out by the power of words etched into silver bars. Endowed with such power, the silver becomes the engine of the industrial revolution, putting England far in advance of any other country. It's all about money, or rather silver, and silver is all about power, over individuals and over countries of individuals.

It is also all about betrayal, all kinds of betrayal, betrayal of ideals, betrayal of the nation, the nation's betrayal of its populace, the betrayal embodied in colonialism, the betrayal of beloved friends. Translation itself, as the quote it tells us, is a betrayal of language.

And I guess what I've said so far is a betrayal of the cogency one would expect in a book review. Lol. 

BABEL will be particularly fascinating to nerds such as myself who are especially interested in linguistics and etymology. Lovers of words. At the same time, it may be tedious for those not interested in such things (especially at 500 pages of small print). Nonetheless, the novel establishes a good pace and keeps it up for the most part throughout. It has the flavor of Dickens, not only for the early 19th century setting, but for the style of the writing and the drawing of the characters. Oliver Twist goes to college and ultimately finds himself in A Tale of Two Cities.