Babel Indigo Special Edition: A Novel

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Babel Indigo Special Edition: A Novel

Babel Indigo Special Edition: A Novel

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And Letty, most privileged and least likable character but slowly she gets under your skin and her straightforwardness, sharp comments deeply affect you. Eventually you learn to resonate with her. Considering how popular this book is, it will likely encourage more people to buy into the blind hatred that leads to a lifetime of anger, suffering, and victimhood. That's sad because I would rather see minorities breaking the cycle of our intergenerational trauma by living well and thriving. You can't achieve that by being vengeful and expecting others to tolerate you, sorry. Some of the book subscription boxes do sell individual titles. (Their subscription books are also fantastic, but I tend not to find a use for all the added merch they come with, so they’re not super cost effective in my case.) Some of the most popular subscription services include: What’s clear is that Rebecca’s time at Cambridge, Oxford, and later Yale greatly informed both her writing and perspective on the state of the world, particularly how it came to be this way. The result is a scathing indictment of British and European colonialism, including the rippling effects across continents; and it’s entirely deserved. Magic in this world is just another resource to be extracted from the poor by the powerful, and when those wells run dry they do what their real life counterparts did—embark to find and exploit other lands and people. But no amount of blood spent will ever be enough to satisfy their incessant thirst for more.

This Indigo special edition of Babel includes an exclusive—and somewhat cheeky—dramatis personae for the key players in the novel. The descriptions may contain spoilers, though, so we’re putting it at the end! Critical Praise But that’s the beauty of learning a new language. It should feel like an enormous undertaking. It ought to intimidate you. It makes you appreciate the complexity of the ones you know already.’” Trust your reader and stop badgering me. I *get* your point, and repeating it 456654346764 times doesn’t make me get it more.

But by far the biggest issue here was Letty. At no point did she feel like a real person. It was SO EVIDENT that she was just a mouthpiece for the author to get her beliefs across. She's a woman which means she has some struggles in academia, but she's white which means she avoids the struggles that non white women face (so you can tell that the author has heard of the word intersectionality). She uses her experiences with sexism to guilt trip others into accepting her demands but also isn't aware of the privilege she has. The narrative CONSTANTLY tells us that she's a racist and an ignoramus but it never actually shows her doing any of these things, which makes it extremely jarring when others accuse her of being bigoted, since there was no build up to it. R.F. Kuang has written a masterpiece. Through a meticulously researched and a wholly impressive deep dive into linguistics and the politics of language and translation, Kuang weaves a story that is part love-hate letter to academia, part scathing indictment of the colonial enterprise, and all fiery revolution.”

Lastly, I need to mention that I have never been to Oxford or United Kingdom. In fact, I have never been outside of Asia. It remains one of my goals to visit the UK and other countries outside Asia. This is to say that Babel did not only immerse me in its memorable story, but it made me want to visit London even more. It's such a vividly portrayed novel with incredible world-building and layered histories. Yes, Babel takes place in our world, but adding the magic of silver-making that required memories and the proficiency in languages and translations to the narrative provided a totally brilliant result in enriching the depth and complexities of the world. I seem to now have a newfound extra appreciation for translators, too. Take a look at this passage:When books are talked about well before they are published, as was the case with Babel, it’s an easy call to pre-make special editions to sell on top of the standard edition. More editions means more people buying. So it stands to reason that a hyped-up book is going to get a lot of editions. Special thanks to my Patrons on Patreon for giving me extra support towards my passion for reading and reviewing! It was almost impressive how Kuang made sure that not a single white character is remotely likable. Even the cook, who was initially nice to Robin when he arrived in Britain, is later revealed to be a terrible person because she saw Robin getting beaten and didn't do anything about it. So yeah, kudos to the author for her dogged determination to make sure no white gets away seeming likeable.

In the years to come, Robin would return so many times to this night. He was forever astonished by its mysterious alchemy, by how easily two badly socialized, restrictively raised strangers had transformed into kindred spirits in the span of minutes." From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel , a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire. trigger warnings + content warnings: loss of a loved one, murder, death, grief, disease/plague mentions, colonization, war, invasion, battle, talk of slavery, abuse, physical abuse from guardian, racism, xenophobia, colorism, use of slurs, blood, talk of suicide, talk of child labor, talk of inhumane work conditions, police brutality, torture, gun violence, brief sexual assault (unwanted touching with intent on more) mention of feet binding, misogyny, talk of drugs, stress + anxiety depictions, vomiting, talk of extreme stress put on students The ultra-contemporary political language concerning, and understanding of, race, colonialism, imperialism, class, wealth, oppression etc weren’t authentic to that period, and this doesn’t make sense because there were activists and academics writing about these issues during this period and they do so in their own language and lexicon. Why do so much research into this period only to disregard the language of that period, especially when you’re writing a book about language and the magic system revolves around language?! I haven’t read a book as intelligent, intellectual, unconventional, moving, unique as Babel for a long time.a b Rabuzzi, Daniel (2022-08-25). "Translation as Oppression and Liberation in "Babel" ". Chicago Review of Books . Retrieved 2022-11-27. At one point Robin says that he feels sorry for Letty and describes her as the innocent one in the group. I thought the author was giving her favorite chew toy a break. But actually, this whole section was about how Letty's innocence came from her ignorance. She could never understand the others or truly experience things alongside them, and her attempts at caring and trying to connect with them were portrayed as annoying. When she grew impatient with their bad moods, it was supposed to be like a 'gotcha' moment, a confirmation that she's not one of them. Maybe this is a dig at white allies and the suggestion is that they'll always benefit from white culture. Even if they think they're being helpful, they're still part of the problem and will always be. See what I mean about this book being mean-spirited? lol

The story in Babel is told almost exclusively from the perspective of Robin Swift. In 1828, Robin Swift lost his last surviving family due to cholera, and he was then brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. Professor Lovell brought Robin to train him in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese—even though Chinese is his first language—in preparation for the day he'll enroll in Oxford University's prestigious Royal Institute of Translation, also known as Babel. Babel 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. 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. Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, feels like a fairytale for Robin. It is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, and knowledge means power. But for Robin, a Chinese boy raised in Britain, this means inevitably betraying his motherland. Robin has to decide whether he should continue to pursue knowledge and stay in Babel, or will he choose to side with the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to sabotaging the silver-working, which in essence, defies Babel. https://limitededitionbook com/2021/02/24/signed-greg-craola-simkins-the-outside-silver-edition-book-imscared-limited-ed/ The biggest flaw of Babel for me is that the messages are not subtle. This is shaping up to be a trend in Kuang’s works, and while I don’t necessarily hate it, I don’t quite love it either. While I enjoyed some of the footnotes that gave us extra tidbits of historical information, others grated on me with their haughty “this is racist by the way, in case you didn’t know” remarks about things that were… obviously racist. I love all of the themes that Kuang so expertly explores, but I am smart enough to figure out for myself how x represents a symbol of oppression or x reveals an imperialist mindset—and I don’t need it repeated throughout the book either. Kuang is brilliant, certainly, and I think her commentary on and critique of whiteness and colonialism is, too. I just wish she would trust the reader a little more. Second, RF Kuang has a very good grasp of readability. For example, she doesn’t have massive paragraphs and massive sentences. She has also modernized the language for 1828. There are no thees or thous.If your faves didn`t make the list, be sure to tell us who they are in the comments so we can add them to part two! 👀 I enjoy reading nonfiction and I have a passion for languages, so when I closed the cover of the book feeling like I had just completed a university course, I was filled with this sort of humming glee. I can see myself reading Babel again and again, poring over every sentence with the same fascination that I experienced this first time through. Victorie, observer, extra intelligent, overqualified, tough, badass worrier fighting tooth and nail to survive. The character development is perfect. Each of them are portrayed impeccably. Robin Swift warms your heart with his kind heart, intelligence, testing his morality from the beginning: should he help the thieves just he’s done before instinctively at the risk of losing his opportunities he’s been provided.



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