THE POWER OF LANGUAGE: “BABEL OR THE NECESSITY OF VIOLENCE” BY R.F. KUANG
THE POWER OF LANGUAGE: “BABEL OR THE NECESSITY OF VIOLENCE” BY R.F. KUANG

Summary/Abstract: “Babel or the Necessity of Violence. An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution” is a surprising five-hundred-page long novel. The reader’s first impression is that it is a historical novel, only to face a much more complex and intriguing story. The question arises: What is it then? Fantasy fiction, historical fantasy, speculative fiction, alternate history, dark fantasy? The right answer is maybe a bit of all of these. This article aims at identifying elements pertaining to both history and fantasy alike. Most importantly, it endeavors to follow the novel’s leading idea: the huge power of words, of language, and of the interrelationship between languages, that is translation.

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