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THE WICKED BARONESS
📚 New Books This Week 📰 Latest News โ˜€๏ธ๐ŸŒ™ Summer Days / Summer Nights Giveaways 🎪 Reader Games

Escape Into Adventure, Romance, Suspense, and Magic This July

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Babel by R.F. Kuang

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Also by R.F. Kuang:

Katabasis (Standard Edition), September 2025
Hardcover
Katabasis (Deluxe Limited Edition), September 2025
Hardcover
The Dragon Republi, July 2025
Hardcover / e-Book
The Poppy War: Collector's Edition, December 2024
Hardcover / e-Book
Babel, August 2023
Paperback / e-Book
Yellowface, May 2023
Hardcover / e-Book
Babel, September 2022
Hardcover / e-Book
The Dragon Republic, July 2020
Paperback / e-Book (reprint)
The Dragon Republic, August 2019
Hardcover / e-Book
The Poppy War, May 2018
Hardcover / e-Book

BABEL
By: R.F. Kuang

Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

Harper Voyager
August 2023
On Sale: August 8, 2023
560 pages
ISBN: 0063021439
EAN: 9780063021433
Kindle: B09MD95S5V
Paperback / e-Book
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Other Editions
Hardcover (September 2022)

Science Fiction Suspense/Thriller | Fantasy Historical

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of The Poppy War 

“Absolutely phenomenal. One of the most brilliant, razor-sharp books I've had the pleasure of reading that isn't just an alternative fantastical history, but an interrogative one; one that grabs colonial history and the Industrial Revolution, turns it over, and shakes it out.” -- Shannon Chakraborty, bestselling author of The City of Brass

From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire.

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel.

Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide…

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence? 

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