Babel: An Arcane History/ R.F. Kuang- eng

Published in 2022, Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution is a speculative novel by R.F. Kuang. Kuang is the author of the Nebula-nominated series The Poppy War and the subject of viral buzz on BookTok, the literature-focused stream on the social media platform TikTok. Set during an alternate timeline in which translation from one language to another is a kind of magic that can be stored in silver, the novel is a story about four Oxford students who confront their complicity in British imperialism.
R.F. Kuang uses dark academia conventions and insights from anti-colonialist struggle to create a world in which the colonized win one battle against the British Empire using magic. The plot and diverse characters make the novel a counter-narrative to works of speculative fiction that never question their characters’ whiteness or the political context that produces such whiteness.