I just finished reading "Babel" by R.F. Kuang, the novel that was widely expected to win the 2023 Hugo Award. (And didn't, possibly for political reasons.) It's set in an imaginary/alternative London in 1828. The industrial revolution is happening, there are worker strikes and uprisings, and we're following Robin Swift, a Chinese boy orphaned and brought to London to study at Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute for Translation, aka Babel. Students at Babel study the world's ancient and modern languages in rigorous scholarly depth and they also learn a form of magic called silver-working. In this alternative history, the engine that fuels the Industrial Revolution is an arcane craft that involves finding pairs of words in different languages that almost match, and then channeling the meaning that's lost in translation into enchanted silver bars.
I love the idea of meaning as a form of energy. In the book, these silver bars are used to build bridges and sail ships, to make railroads go faster and to keep factories running. But as Robin discovers, silver-working has upended the old economic order, devastating Britain's working class. Whole communities are being destroyed, and families are losing their homes and going hungry. Conditions are even worse in Robin's native China and the rest of the British Empire, where silver-working drives ruthless colonial expansion. As the story progresses, Robin gets drawn into an underground network of former students trying to organize a resistance and he has to decide -- how far is he willing to go? And what will it take to spark a revolution?
Kuang is brilliant in the way she subtly parallels the real history of the Industrial Revolution with the advent of neo-liberalism and global capitalism in our own time, a bit like the linguistic matched pairs that Babel's scholars deploy to power the Empire. If you love words, world building, 19th century novels about orphan boys and determined young women and an Oxford setting, I highly recommend "Babel." And if you wind up -- like me -- wanting to dive more deeply into contemporary critiques of capitalism, I think "Babel" would pair beautifully with our "Against Capitalism" show. Have a listen and let me know what you think!
– Anne