Babel Collector's Edition: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators'...

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R F Kuang Nico Delort

Babel Collector's Edition

Name: Babel Collector's Edition
Price: 110.95 AUD
Availability: PreOrder
ISBN: 9780063432888

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

R F Kuang, Nico Delort

$110.95

Hardback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

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English

Miscellaneous
16 June 2026

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Horror & ghost stories; Fantasy; Myth & legend told as fiction; Fantasy

R. F. Kuang's instant #1 New York Times bestselling novel is now available as a stunning Deluxe Collector's Edition featuring a stamped faux-leather case with gold foil, beautiful illustrated endpapers, bookmark ribbon, designed edges, and intricate interior black-and-white illustrations from Nico Delort. Babel is 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?

By: R F Kuang
Illustrated by: Nico Delort
Imprint: Miscellaneous
Country of Publication: United States
Weight: 837g
ISBN: 9780063432888
ISBN 10: 0063432889
Pages: 576
Publication Date: 16 June 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of the Poppy War trilogy, Babel: An Arcane History, Yellowface, and Katabasis. Her work has won the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and British Book Awards. A Marshall Scholar, she has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Sinophone literature, and Asian American literature.