Translation is as much an art as a science. R. F. Kuang would know. She regularly inhabits two worlds, having earned her Master’s of Philosophy in Chinese studies from Magdalene College (Cambridge) and is currently doing PhD work in East Asian Languages and Literature at Yale.

Whenever a word is translated into a different language, something is lost. It’s that lost element that fires the magic system of her innovative fantasy novel, Babel. The book follows the lives of four university students in 1980s Oxford. Themes of colonialism, complicity, and (of course), language fill the pages as this tight cohort negotiates loyalties in an unjust system.

Babel is gripping from start to finish. Kuang uses the fantasy genre to shine a light on the dark complexities of our world.

Kuang, R. F. Babel: An Arcane History. E-book ed., HarperCollins, 2022. EPUB.