Babel

by R.F. Kuang

hegemony.

dominance

She huffed. ‘Don’t be dramatic.’

she's so painfully unaware

oafish

stupid

ignominies

public shame

We’re all liberals, aren’t we?

ironic

reedy,

high tone of voice

catharsis.

purification or cleansing

That it was insane to imagine that the British legal system was truly neutral, that they would receive a fair trial, that people who looked like Robin, Ramy, and Victoire might kill a white Oxford professor, throw his body overboard, lie about it for weeks, and then walk away unscathed? That the fact that she clearly believed all this was only evidence of the starkly different worlds they lived in?

exactly

Do they just look the other way when rich white girls kill people?

they might as well

Letty began to cry.

ugh white people

Only six scholars remained: Professor Chakravarti, Professor Craft, two undergraduates – Ibrahim and a tiny girl named Juliana – and two graduate fellows named Yusuf and Meghana, who worked in Legal and Literature respectively. Faces of colour, faces from the colonies, except for Professor Craft.

this is crazy