Babel

by R.F. Kuang

Auferre trucidare rapere falsis nominibus imperium atque ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant.

‘I only want to know,’ said Robin, ‘why silver could not save my mother.’

wait that packed a punch ow

‘She wants you,’ Robin said. He’d only just realized this, and now that he said it out loud, it seemed so obvious that he felt stupid for not seeing it earlier. ‘Very badly. So why—’ ‘Don’t you know why?’ Their eyes met. Robin felt a prickle at the back of his neck. The space between them felt very charged, like the moment between lightning and thunder,

SCREAMING

‘But if the system is so fragile, why do we so easily accept the colonial situation? Why do we think it’s inevitable?

‘That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.’

this is basically a perfect summary of this book