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.

Family names were not things to be dropped and replaced at whim, he thought. They marked lineage; they marked belonging.

Only he could determine the truth, because only he could communicate it to all parties.

He felt a sharp ache in his chest as Canton disappeared over the horizon, and then a raw emptiness, as if a grappling hook had yanked his heart out of his body.

He pulled on his English accent like a new coat, adjusted everything he could about himself to make it fit, and, within weeks, wore it with comfort.

Robin saw immediately that London was, like Canton, a city of contradictions and multitudes, as was any city that acted as a mouth to the world.

The lifeblood of London carried a sharp, tinny timbre wholly unlike the rickety, clacking bamboo that underwrote Canton.

London was voracious, was growing fat on its spoils and still, somehow, starved.

Words and phrases you think are carved into your bones can disappear in no time.’

For a country that profited so well from trading in spices, its citizens were violently averse to actually using them;

The Balliol boys hooted like monkeys; their cackles stretched alongside their shadows against the brick walls.

They were men at Oxford; they were not Oxford men. But the enormity of this knowledge was so devastating, such a vicious antithesis to the three golden days they’d blindly enjoyed, that neither of them could say it out loud.

After all, we’re here to make the unknown known, to make the other familiar.

that they were all four of them drowning in the unfamiliar, and they saw in each other a raft, and clinging to one another was the only way to stay afloat.