Savannah, it turns out, is catatonic, and before the suicide attempt had completely assumed the identity of a dead friend-the implication being that she couldn't stand being a Wingo anymore. When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. It's ambitious and powerful while displaying a deep love of language and literature.Ī flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy ( The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. While occasionally hampered by rather self-aware critiques of colonialism, in general this is an expansive, sympathetic, and nevertheless scathing critique of Western imperialism and how individuals are forced to make their peace with the system and survive or to fight back and face the consequences. Kuang draws a keen parallel between extracting knowledge and extracting resources, examining the terrible power of systems built on inequality and the uncomfortable experiences of the marginalized within those systems, whether due to race or gender.
As Robin’s studies continue, he begins to question the colonial machine from which he can’t seem to break free. Soon, Robin learns of the secretive Hermes Society, a group working against the hegemony of the Royal Institute of Translation. Though Robin and his friends are met with racism, they also find true joy in their studies and the heady business of translation. Britain has built its power upon silver bars and the magical powers imparted to them by translation, but in order to maintain that power, Britain needs foreigners and their languages. In Oxford, Robin meets other students who are not so different from him: young people brought to England from other countries to maintain the empire.
In exchange for food and lodging, he will spend years studying Latin, Greek, and Mandarin to prepare himself to enter Oxford’s Royal Institute of Translation, known as Babel. Saved from the cholera outbreak that claimed the rest of his family, Robin has the chance to begin a new, comfortable life at professor Lovell's estate. In 1829, professor Richard Lovell brings a young Chinese boy now known as Robin Swift from his home in Canton to England. Can the British Empire, built on the power of foreign languages and magic, maintain its grip on the globe?
0 kommentar(er)
