Category Archives: Books

Babel

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R. F Kuang

Front cover of Babel, book written by R. F. Kuang

Set in a fantasy world where, in the 19th century, magical artifacts are behind the projection of (especially) Britain’s colonial power, this thinly disguised polemic is also an entertaining and sometimes thoughtful novel.

It starts with the adoption of a Chinese orphan by one of the professors at Babel (the nickname of Oxford University’s Royal Institute of Translation). That orphan, renamed Robin Swift, is forced by his adopted father to devotedly study languages with a view to him gaining entry to Babel as a student. At Babel, they research and produce the special pairs of words from different languages that, when engraved on silver bars, produce magical effects. The magical process behind these matching pairs of words is explained in the book and whether you accept it so as to enjoy the rest of the novel will depend on your ability to suspend disbelief. (It was a tough ask for me.)

Swift gets into Babel and meets up with three other students – Ramy, Letty, and Victoire – who will accompany him on his scholastic journey.

To avoid giving any spoilers, let’s just say that Robin has a challenging relationship with the professor who adopted him and, apart from that, the bulk of the plot focuses on these students gradually learning and understanding the real-world effects of the work they do and its importance to the British Empire. In their lives, they encounter at first hand, racism, naked imperialism, and see how far those in power will go to hold onto and even extend their dominion. Violence is never far away.

The author’s message is delivered in a slightly heavy-handed manner. Occasionally, the narrative is over-the-top and the image it inspired in me was a lecturer shouting at an audience ‘You must believe this!’ I am not attempting to excuse colonialism and imperialism, but the world is rarely black and white, and there is little nuance to be found here.

Despite this, on the whole I enjoyed the book. There are several well-drawn, well-rounded and believable characters. Away from the politics, the writing is generally a pleasure to read with only rare times when there’s a feeling that some parts are overwritten. The Oxford backdrop is wonderfully portrayed with nugget after nugget of tempting detail – whether real or not, I have no idea. The plot is solid. The build up to the final, terrible scene is pitched at just the right tempo and contains some of the sharpest writing. Finally, the lingusitic elements – as the matching pairs are explained – are an impressive labor of love. The magic rationale may not survive vigorous examination, but there’s clearly a ton of knowledge and hard work that has been crammed into this book to give it – with a pinch of suspended disbelief – a well deserved aura of mystical wonder.

One of the best fantasy books I’ve read in a while.

The Lies They Tell

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Tuvia Tenenbom

Cover of The Lies They Tell. A cartoon image of the author taking a selfie with a figure looking like Uncle Sam.

This book recounts the experiences of Tuvia Tenenbom in a trip across the USA (sometime around 2015) as he tried to find out more about his adopted homeplace and its people. The man, who was born to be a rabbi and, instead, became a journalist and dramatist, displays all three career traits with a narrative full of morality, insight, humor, and theater.

Be warned. Some of the people he meets are not people you would want as your friends, or anywhere near you. But our intrepid interviewer somehow navigates peacefully (in the main) and largely succeeds in getting them to open up to him and display their inner character. There are a couple of occasions where individuals spout forth some racist poison directed at him and when Tuvia asks them to repeat it so he can record them, they refuse, turning into innocent bystanders. Sometimes, the people he talks to are just plain racists who don’t know who or what Tuvia is.

Indeed, much of his encounters have an unpleasant element – at least to this reader – as many of the interviewees display shocking ignorance, hypocrisy, and hate. It will not be a surprise that many who fall into these categories are pro-Palestinian. Don’t worry, though. For balance, there are a couple of Jewish shmucks.

Here’s one snippet for example.

While visiting Aspen, he goes to a Yom Kippur service, held by the largest Jewish congregation there. In his words, the service sucks.

All in all, this is a perfect funeral service for America’s Judaism. I watch this service, which contains very few Jewish motifs, and wonder why these old people bothered to come here. There’s very little of anything “Jewish” to this service. Like the Indians, very few here know their ancestors’ language, in this case Hebrew, and the whole thing is so melted down that there is nothing to see and very little to hear. It’s all empty of meaning.

Also while in Aspen, he notes that the magazine Salon that day published an article accusing the Israeli army of “cowardly brutality” claiming that “an Israeli sodier squashed a Palestinian kid, and then it [Salon] goes on to compare Israel to Nazi Germany in all but name.”

He continues:

At this particular date in history, when every day thousands of Arabs are murdered, violated, lose their homes and are abused by other Arabs in the ever-turbulent Middle East, it is interesting to read this story of one Arab kid supposedly suffering at the hands of one Jew. Ten, twenty years ago an article like this would have been published in a KKK magazine.

Remember, this is from 2015.

Though it’s not all a procession of bad people, the few examples of good humanity he reports on are not enough to completely remove the overwhelming stench of stupidity on display. However, lest you think things cannot get worse, they can and they do. For Tuvia’s travels take him into the dreadful duo that are the USA’s core social battlefields. No, not Republicans and Democrats. No, not pro or anti-gun control. He exposes instead, the sickening poverty and racism. Tuvia’s brief peaks at the real world of the poor Blacks and Indians (Native Indians) are shocking and an indictment of the USA that cannot and should not be excused. The political hypocrisy is sickening.

The latter horrors almost make the ever-present antisemitism he meets seem like a minor irritant. Of course, it’s not and Tuvia often royally skewers the bigots using just the words out of their mouths.

The even sadder discovery, though, is how much of so-called American Jewry dedicates its time to help other communities who fail, in any meaningful shape or form, to reciprocate.

For example, of his visit to Montgomery, he says this:

Who knows everything about black history? …The locals who know everything about voting rights, King, Parks, and the rest of this country’s black-white history, the locals who tell me all about it, are the local Jews and their leaders. These Jews support the blacks and have dedicated their time to helping them. How many blacks are on the side of Jews in their struggles against anti-Semitism? I ask them. They can’t name one.

“He also meets Jews intent on criticizing (actually defaming and libelling) Jews and Israel. It’s a form of supercharged suicidial wokeism, and it’s repugnant. Ten years on, it’s even worse.

This is a depressing book to read. Nevertheless, it’s an important to book read if you want to better understand the state of the USA and the crumbling of many – not all – Jewish communities there.