Babel

by R.F. Kuang

Language was always the companion of empire, and as such, together they begin, grow, and flourish. And later, together, they fall.

A lie was not a lie if it was never uttered; questions that were never asked did not need answers.

He delighted when common words were, unexpectedly, formed from other words he knew. Hussy was a compound of house and wife. Holiday was a compound of holy and day.

Goodbye was, incredibly, a shortened version of God be with you.

Inside, the heady wood-dust smell of freshly printed books was overwhelming. If tobacco smelled like this, Robin thought, he’d huff it every day.

‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ Robin admitted. It sounded very silly when he said it out loud. Everything about Griffin made him feel like a child in contrast. ‘It – it’s one of my favourite books.

the phrase tǎntú* literally meant ‘a flat road’, metaphorically, ‘a tranquil life’. This was what he wanted: a smooth, even path to a future with no surprises.

Tabby cats were named after a striped silk that was in turn named for its place of origin: a quarter of Baghdad named al-‘Attābiyya.

‘The Germans have this lovely word, Sitzfleisch,’

‘Translated literally, it means “sitting meat”. Which all goes to say, sometimes you need simply to sit on your bottom and get things done.’

‘In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.’ CHARLES DICKENS, Great Expectations

‘It doesn’t translate well into English. It means “whereabouts”. A place where one feels like home, where they feel like themselves.’

‘It’s just as big as we thought,’ Ramy said. ‘It’s just that we forgot the rest of it mattered. We got so good at refusing to see what was right in front of us.’

‘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.’