Review: Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

R.F. Kuang's long awaited entry in the dark academia genre turned a lot of heads for months, even years, before its publication - and already the phenomenon is looking to repeat itself in her next novel Yellowface, her most realistic book yet but also very incisive in its social commentary from all the buzz I'm seeing about it already. Kuang is no stranger to harsh critiques of Western society and history, and this book, in which she shifts away from the largely allegorical parallels of the Poppy War trilogy and towards the real history of English imperialism (and yet still with some magical allegories to underline her thesis, as it were), is no exception. Kuang devotes hundreds of pages to the density of university learning and the subject of language, and the rapacious true purpose of the Babel Institute at Oxford, and the danger inherent in joining a revolutionary group that's been spending years and years planting the seeds for their eventual attack against a system that covers so many continents. And not unlike Kuang's previous novel The Burning God, this book builds up slowly to an ending that absolutely lays waste to everything and everyone in its path. And while there's easy room to assume that there could still be more stories to follow The Burning God, Babel has pretty clearly ended, though its presence in my mind will linger for quite a long time.

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