Babel

by R.F. Kuang

The loneliness, the beatings, the long and aching hours of study, the ingesting of languages like bitter tonic so that he could one day do this – it was all worth it.

They were trying to impress him – and by impressing him, to display their own superiority, to prove that to be a Babbler was not as good as being one of Elton Pendennis’s friends.

‘We hold the secrets, and we can set whatever terms we like. That’s the beauty of being cleverer than everyone else.

History isn’t a premade tapestry that we’ve got to suffer, a closed world with no exit. We can form it. Make it. We just have to choose to make it.’

Letty suddenly broke down crying and declared she knew not a word of German, not a single word, that she was a fraud and her entire career at Babel had been based on pretence. None of them understood this rant until much later, for she had indeed delivered it in German.

He would try desperately to justify what he’d done as self-defence, but such justification would rely on details he could hardly remember, details he wasn’t sure whether he’d made up to convince himself he had not really murdered his father in cold blood.

Girl show dont tell

My point being, abolition happened because white people found reasons to care – whether those be economic or religious.

Magdalen Tower fell the next morning.

What the fuck is that

This was not an act; they knew Letty could not act.

She literally acted for weeks