Babel

THE #2 SUNDAY TIMES AND #1 NYT BESTSELLER

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

Oxford, 1836.

The city of dreaming spires.

It is the centre of all knowledge and progress in the world.

And at its centre is Babel, the Royal Institute of Translation. The tower from which all the power of the Empire flows.

Orphaned in Canton and brought to England by a mysterious guardian, Babel seemed like paradise to Robin Swift.

Until it became a prison…

But can a student stand against an empire?

An incendiary new novel from award-winning author R.F. Kuang about the power of language, the violence of colonialism, and the sacrifices of resistance.

R.F. Kuang’s book ‘Babel’ was a New York Times bestseller w/c 11-09-2022.

About the Author

Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, and Yellowface. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards. A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Sinophone literature, and Asian American literature.

Industry Reviews‘One for Philip Pullman fans’
– THE TIMES

‘This one is an automatic buy’
– GLAMOUR

‘Ambitious, sweeping and epic’
– EVENING STANDARD

‘Razor-sharp’
– DAILY MAIL

‘An ingenious fantasy about empire’
– GUARDIAN

‘A masterpiece that resonates with power and knowledge. BABEL is a stark picture of the cruelty of empire, a distillation of dark academia, and a riveting blend of fantasy and historical fiction – a monumental achievement’

– Samantha Shannon, author of THE PRIORY OF THE ORANGE TREE
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