Amusingly, Kuang feels the need to begin this 540+ page novel with an author’s note on her representation of Oxford university. Accurately, she says,
The trouble with writing an Oxford novel is that anyone who has spent time at Oxford will scrutinize your text to determine if your presentation of Oxford aligns with their own memories of the place. Worse if you are an American writing about Oxford…” (pxi).
This novel, like Kuang’s rendering of Oxford, is sci-fi as well as fiction, and the liberties it takes with reality seem entirely justified and even well created.
Our protagonist is one Robin Swift, a Chinese-British (white) boy from Canton, whose father is the eminent Professor Lovell (and whose mother is ethnic Chinese), whom the professor saves from cholera to train in linguistics and to bring to England. The professor does not trouble himself to save the mother. From the outset, we are told about silver bars, which have the power to do seemingly anything, including cure cholera, kill people, work machinery, etc. Silver, which is run by words, matching pairs spoken by a native speaker, generate that magical power – a most seductive idea to all those of us who already, intrinsically love words. It is never fully explained in the novel exactly how these silver bars work: Silver-work:
the way words seized what no words could describe and invoke a physical effect that should not be” (p82).
Generally, the reader is given to understand silver can be inscribed on and then can be used to power just about anything.
When he comes of age and when he has had enough training, Robin is sent to Oxford’s Babel, where linguists are trained, where he meets his 3 bosom buddies: Ramy, a prodigy from Calcutta, Letty, the brilliant daughter of an admiral who fought her own way to Oxford after her non-academic brother wastes his chances, and Victoria, a black woman who was first brought to Paris from Haiti by a French guardian, then onto Oxford. These 4 are one class of Oxford’s Babel scholars, all linguists who have Latin and Greek and at least one other language (apart from English). This novel is a joy to those who love etymology, with its wonderful cross-language play with words, tracing of roots and origins, and stressing of the power (and limitation) of words to connect and communicate. These graduates are being trained in the service of the British Empire, to work silver and to translate, both of which require advanced linguistics skills.
Oxford is described by Prof Lovell as
A place where all the great minds of the nation can congregate in research, study, and instruction’. […] ‘Imagine a town of scholars, all researching the most marvellous, fascinating things. Science. Mathematics. Languages. Literature. Imagine building after building filled with more books than you’ve seen in your entire life. Imagine quiet, solitude, and a serene place to think.’ He sighed. ‘London is a blathering mess. It’s impossible to get anything done here; the city’s too loud, and it demands too much of you. […] But Oxford gives you all the tools you need for your work – food, clothes, books, tea – and then it leaves you alone. It is the centre of all knowledge and innovation in the civilized world’” (p23).
Indeed, there are many lovely passages of how these 4 friends roam Oxford and enjoy their youth and its beauties and charms. But the novel moves swiftly, and rapidly, Robin finds himself helping those in opposition to the British Empire. The novel does a good job of exploring gender and racial discriminations. It also does a lovely job of discussing issues of translation, its roles and uses.
“Translation, from time immemorial, has been the facilitator of peace. Translation makes possible communication, which in turn makes possible the kind of diplomacy, trade, and cooperation between foreign peoples that brings wealth and prosperity to all” (p81).
There are further thought-provoking questions of what purposes translators serve. What might a faithful translation entail?
“Fidelity to whom? The text? The audience? The author? Is fidelity separate from style? From beauty?” (p151)
“Which seems right to you? DO we try our hardest, as translators, to render ourselves invisible? Or do we remind our reader that what they are reading was not written in their native language? […] Is faithful translation impossible, then?[…] Translation means doing violence upon the original, means wrapping 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 also an act of betrayal?” (p153)
The pace of the novel is extremely rapid, and we readers are moved into events thick and fast. It makes for easy suspension of disbelief. Even while there is the action packed level of travel, adventure, killings, revolution, being fugitive, etc., there is also running alongside the complexity of mix-raced identities and mixed loyalties, of wanting to be useful and also not wanting to be used, of friendships and trust and of course betrayals, or values and being products of society, of hospitality and the begrudging of the same. A really beautiful read, utterly charming and riveting not withstanding its heft/length. It is to be hoped Kuang will continue to write these carefully crafted novels.
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