Babel: An Arcane History, R.F. Kuang
Babel is one of the best books I have read in a long time. It is set in the 1840s in England, and Robin Swift has been plucked from his native Hong Kong by an English professor to study at the prestigious Royal Institute of Translation at Oxford, otherwise known as Babel. The institute specializes in silver-working, finding match pairs between languages to essentially run the city, in addition to many other (nefarious) activities. As Robin realizes that the institute is basically funding colonization, he – and then his friends – have to decide whether to put their lives on the line to try to stop the institute in its tracks. The novel serves as a basic history of colonization, with a dash of the fantastical thrown in, and should be obligatory reading for anyone who thinks that colonization and its effects have ever been, or will be, in the past. On a side note, I loved this book so much that I am going to go to Madrid (fingers crossed) to see R.F. Kuang speak in June! If anyone is around and interested, let me know.
We Are All Birds of Uganda, Hafsa Zayyan
Zayyan’s debut novel is something I stumbled across in a bookstore in Moroco and is another book that I really enjoyed, mainly because I learned so much from the story. It is set in London and Kampala, and tells the story of a family forced to leave the country they adopted as their own. Hasan’s family immigrated from India to Kampala and it is the only country he has ever known when he is forced to leave when a new regime takes power. All he wants is to return, and all the reader knows comes from letters he wrote to his deceased wife. Meanwhile, Sameer is an up and coming lawyer based in London, who only knows that his family immigrated from Uganda to the United Kingdom in the 1960s. When he goes there on a whim hoping to learn more about his family, he discovers truths both ugly and beautiful, which convince him to stay and make a life there, much to his family’s disappointment and even anger. Touching upon colonization and prejudice, as well as love that flies in the face of both, We Are All Birds of Uganda is an uplifting story of returning home.