BABEL
Shadows cast by dreaming spires
► RELEASED 1 SEPTEMBER 560 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook
► Author RF Kuang
► Publisher HarperVoyager
➜ To generalise wildly for a moment, genre fiction puts a premium on plot. Lit-fic concerns, such as the internal life of characters or taking time to describe the flowers, are frowned upon. It follows that RF Kuang’s decision to riff on the classic Victorian novel with Babel is at the very least brave.
That’s because while the fiction of Dickens, Eliot or Thackeray doesn’t want for incident, it moves at a pace that can seem slow to modern readers. Similarly, Babel, certainly in its early chapters, doesn’t see the need to hurry. Set in the middle of the 1830s, it invites readers into a world of sea voyages, dons talking sagely, and afternoon tea.