Kuang doesn’t hesitate to make the rest of her characters just as nuanced: Ramiz must toe the line between what’s accepted and what he truly wants Victoire must swallow the constant racism she faces even from those close to her, while Lettie struggles to escape her brother’s shadow and the Empire’s propaganda. Despite this, it takes him a long time before he decides to actively rebel against the Empire, which is at the heart of his character arc. Kuang pulls no punches in describing just how much disdain the white British population has for foreigners, particularly those of colour, and the privilege a white-passing person like Robin has. Once at Oxford, he flourishes until cracks begin to appear in his vision of the perfect Empire. Growing up alongside him for the first third of the novel, we see a lonely boy trying to mould himself into a british subject, but never quite fitting in. Norrell - grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of translation as a tool of empire.Īfter his family dies of cholera, Robin Swift is plucked from the Chinese Empire in order to be raised and trained as a translator to serve the British Empire’s silverworking industry from Oxford. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide: Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence? What is he willing to sacrifice to bring Babel down?īabel - a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal response to Jonathan Strange & Mr.

As his studies progress Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to sabotaging the silver-working that supports imperial expansion.

But knowledge serves power, and for Robin, a Chinese boy raised in Britain, serving Babel inevitably means betraying his motherland.

Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, is a fairytale for Robin a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. Silver-working has made the British Empire unparalleled in power, and Babel’s research in foreign languages serves the Empire’s quest to colonize everything it encounters. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation - also known as Babel.īabel is the world’s center of translation and, more importantly, of silver-working: the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation through enchanted silver bars, to magical effect. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.ġ828. When Robin is confronted with the true reality of the British Empire, he must decide for himself whether he is strong enough to make a change in Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.

Babel arcane history