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 of translation and, more importantly, of silver-working: the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation through enchanted silver bars, to magical effect. Silver-working has made the British Empire unparalleled in power, and Babel's research in foreign languages serves the Empire's quest to colonize everything it encounters.

Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, is a fairytale for Robin; a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge serves power, and for Robin, a Chinese boy raised in Britain, serving Babel inevitably means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to sabotaging the silver-working that supports 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? What is he willing to sacrifice to bring Babel down?

Babel — a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal response to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell — grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of translation as a tool of empire.

If you read nothing else this year, please read Babel.

I’m no writer and summarizing how I feel about this book, how it impacted me, and how incredibly awed I am by this written piece of literature, will be quite the undertaking. But I need you to know, because books like this are few and far between and we need more of them in people’s hands.

You may have seen this book around or you may have heard people talk about it online, but if you haven’t, I’m here to put it under your radar. There’s a lot of hype surrounding Kuang’s Babel and it is 100% deserving of it.

The Happy Place 5 is a monthly series where a few friends and I post 5 of our favorites books for a certain topic or theme. The name is from a Discord group that I am a part of. We created the space to have a positive environment for a handful of close friends. All of us are bookworms, and many of us are bookstagrammers and bloggers. So we decided to start a blog post series together! I’ll link my friends blogs and posts for this month’s topic at the end of this post.

I guess I missed the November edition of The Happy Place 5 haha. But oh well! We continue on with the series with this month’s theme. December is a month of wrapping up the past year, but it’s also a great time to look ahead to the coming one. In that vein, today I’ll be talking about five of my anticipated 2022 books. This was honestly so hard to choose (and you’ll see I cheated and added an honorable mention). 2022 is really looking like an INCREDIBLE reading year. So let’s get to it!

Although I missed the first day of Lunar New Year, I know that at least in Chinese tradition the new year celebration lasts for 15 days. So really, I’m only a little bit late to the festivities, as today (Feb. 26) is the last day (Lantern Festival). I originally wanted to make a post about books that take place during LNY, but ummmm I didn’t know of any haha. SO you get to have a good smattering of my favorite Asian authors (and a few authors I need to read)! Lunar New Year is celebrated in many different Asian cultures, so I wanted to include authors of many different Asian heritages.