It is a fair statement to say that there are few young authors today who simultaneously more generate discussions, controversy, and critical acclaim than R.F Kuang. Debuting with the Poppy War Trilogy which cemented her as a hallmark fantasy author, Babel was her sophomore title that truly consolidated her place within the literature world today. Interestingly, despite being Kuang’s most acclaimed book to date, its detractors criticize Babel for being ‘boring’, ‘condescending’, and ‘naive’, particularly pertaining to its criticisms on colonialism. Personally, I disagree. While imperfect, Babel succeeds in multitudes, and is easily one of the best books I’ve read in a while. This is especially true when evaluated holistically, carefully considering what the project actually set out to do.

I have yet to see enough readers discuss how deeply rooted the arguments, happenings, and power dynamics described in Babel are in history. As a history major, the specific details and references to seminal texts that transformed scholarly understanding of the 1830s tickled a part of my brain that most fiction books don’t. Readers who may have never heard the specific names of figures and scholars mentioned might be alienated slightly, but the treasury of references smoothly incorporated into the plot make this book quite unlike any other.

Many criticize Babel for its simplicity. We have come to a point in literary culture where we equate ambiguity, or fiction that offers ‘no easy answers’ as real literature or good fiction. But there is a lot to be said about Kuang’s prose that shines with astonishing clarity, perhaps to the point that it frames complex arguments into something that feels as if one can come to the logical conclusion all on its own, being flattened into “colonialism = bad”. Believing, with all of your heart, that the latter is the sole message of this 500+ page book, does the book a severe injustice.

This book distills the zeitgeist of the 19th century, the same arguments that went back and forth that perpetuated the evil of empire, as well as the nature of change. Not superficial advocacy like a white feminist movement, but real, systemic change. Furthermore, the role of rhetoric in driving this change was approached with careful nuance. It astonishes me that not enough people give Kuang her flowers for pointing out very real ironies of the slow process of dismantling the empire: how slavery was not abolished primarily because of public pressure (the abolitionists) but because continued mistreatment might hurt the interests of those in power. The historical continuities of ‘slavery’ despite being legally banned that trickle down to this very day, the necessity of violence in decolonization (the Frantz Fanon shoutout elicited a very visceral scream that rang from my gut)—these are extremely important topics that have shaped the course of history and created the modern world as we know it.

I could go on about how much care Kuang put into presenting these nuances via her direct and accessible prose to the general public who would, in most circumstances, never gain access to the nuances of this scholarly discourse. She is doing something no other, or at least, only very few modern fiction authors are attempting to do: using the platform she was provided to ‘democratize’ access to this information, and I don’t believe that many of her critics understand the weight of her approach. Indeed, Babel is a love-hate letter to academia.

I like my ambiguities in fiction. But as a reader and academic myself, I can appreciate Kuang’s analytical critique. Sure, her footnotes can be too on-the-nose at times, but the story flows whether you read them all or not. For those eager to extract as much information from the novel as possible, they are worth more than any silver that the empire could have spoonfed into our faces (and yes, the empire still exists today).

It wasn’t too clear what the main character Robin Swift’s personality and defining traits were at first. Looking back to his origin story, his character arc and development is consistent and impressive. He was not a born revolutionary. He lives between languages, worlds, and loyalties. He wades in denial for as long as it possibly can hold him, until he drowns. But not without pulling as much as the world as he could with him. I weep for him. I shall think about him for a very, very, long time.

Many say that the ending is weak. I disagree. I don’t think the reader needs to know what specifically happened after its conclusion, because the book frames itself as a history of the Oxford Translator’s Revolution. Like many revolutions, the aftermath is difficult to predict. And that is the point. Something will definitely change, but to know specifically what is a long shot. Many real-life revolutionaries, even after successful revolutions, did not end up with the results they wanted, and that is just the harsh reality of history. But I, firmly from the bottom of my heart, believe that Robin and his compatriots made a severe dent in the history of this fantastical world of Oxford.

The aftermath of revolutions often became the starting points of other narratives. Too much specificity in this regard would have distorted the point of this book. Besides, emphasizing the impossibility of an Abrahamic original language is an extremely poetic way to end the book given its anticolonial themes. In many ways, what is lost in trade, in the dependencies of the colonized to the colonizers, is also lost in translation, between and across languages. The empire eats everything up and no one will be safe under continuous expansion. Having taken Professor Odelia Lu’s translation theory class (LIT 311), I strongly resonated with many of her comments. I wish I had read it earlier, quite honestly, and now I have to pay the price for my procrastination. So no, the ending is not weak, and it is the only logical conclusion to the events that transpired before.

Kuang’s prose is purposely limited. There may be too much ‘telling’ but not ‘showing’, which may put off some readers. However, in Babel, her writing style works because of the ambition in her storytelling. If she wrote with more embellishments, flourishes, varied and unpredictable sentence patterns, it would have rendered her more complex sections inaccessible and self-indulgent. Kuang is self-indulgent, but never at the expense of clarity. In other words, this feels like the kind of book that only Kuang could have written.

Babel made me angry at what has happened, what can’t be changed, and what still is happening in the world. No, it is not perfect, but Babel has weight, insight and ambition to be a future classic.

I highly recommend Babel to anyone interested in history, colonialism, linguistics. Particularly, I think history majors will most definitely appreciate the amount of care and research done in Babel. Book genre-wise, anyone a fan of Dark Academia will almost certainly appreciate Babel in one way or another. Within DKU, Babel will especially resonate with Global Cultural Studies/Humanities majors, Cultures and Movements/Cultures and Societies majors, Arts and Media majors, and Global China Studies majors. The Opium War plays a key role in the book, and it rewired my brain to see it portrayed so unabashedly in a fiction setting, especially after having written a paper on it for high school. Overall, I recommend Babel to those who wish to gain greater insights as to how the world works, and those with an open mind.