Babel: The SUNDAY TIMES and #1 NEW YORK TIMES bestseller

Buch ist ok ;) muss man mögen grins aber eine super schnelle Lieferung ;)

très bien - pas de problème

A singular view of colonization, in which, it is up to the reader to connect the imagined silver bars with a factual reason behind colonial conquests.

Amazing historical fiction! Couldn’t put it down.

This book crushed my soul and made me question everything I know and love. How can a book make you feel so smart yet so incredibly foolish? This book is the best thing I have ever read. I both love it and hate it so much. Please read it immediately.

Received the book today, so this isn’t a review of the actual story.I bought the hardcover and it came with faulty binding which made the cover a bit twisted and bent, the dust cover also was crinkled due to this. I kinda regret buying the hardcover since it’s not nice looking and is more expensive than the pocket version.

This is the first book in a while that's left me truly speechless. It starts off sad, and slowly builds until Chekhov's gun fires and the tower comes crumbling down.There are so many things I could say about this book, I'm not really sure where to begin, so I guess I'll start at the beginning. At the start of the book, Babel is shown as a wonderful and amazing creation that benefits all. However even then you see the mask begin to slip, the hints of cruelty and indifference. As the story continues, the mask slips more and more until you're staring into the mass of harm and rot Babel had become, still keeping up its smile even with the newly visible blood dripping from its wealth.Speaking of slow changes in perspective, Robin was an amazing choice as the main character! He starts off falling into the appeal of Babel and what it offers, buying into its disguise as he's gifted the riches stolen from foreign lands without understanding the pain that got it there. There's even a scene in the book early on where Robin sees a homeless family and tosses literal pennies from his limitless budget at them, which was a perfect metaphor for how Babel as a whole acted. Tossing pennies at the poor people while patting itself on the back and ignoring the actual horrors of what's happening. As the story goes on though, he starts seeing the cracks in the walls and the gaps in the mask. Watching his character's descent from a peaceful but cowardly kid into the determined martyr that was willing to tear down an empire with its own creation was somehow both extremely satisfying and extremely haunting.The commentary on violence was also incredibly thought out and explained. One thing this book did particularly well was showing arguments for both sides. Neither the violent nor the peaceful side were dumbed down to make the message easier, but the effects and results of the actions still made an extremely convincing argument. Another thing I loved about this book was the realism when showing the ways the characters affected the world. It showed clearly that revolutions weren't just everyone vs the government, the fighting isn't glamorous or fair, and the people's reactions and ideas were always reasonable for their character.Babel as a whole also makes an amazing metaphor. It shows you the side you'd see if you lived there at the time, all the luxury and none of the violence. The people weren't shown the silver mines, or the opium dens, or the fields of plants entire cities were leveled to grow. It really made me process for the first time why it took so long for significant movements against colonialism to form. This book also did an amazing job of showing that some people will stare directly at the belly of the beast and still choose to look away since that's easier than confronting what they'd ignored for years.All of that coming to an end as Babel, doomed to one day fall beneath its own claws, was crushed by the very thing it claimed to idealize and fought to protect. The languages and silver stolen from faraway lands became the very things that brought about Babel's downfall.

There was so much I liked about this book. Ms. Kuang has a great style of writing, that pulls the reader in. Her characterization is wonderful. Each individual feels unique and memorable. The topic and theme of colonialism and exploitation of societies for the enrichment of others is absolutely timely.At the same time... I felt like the book was building up to some kind of... twist? It felt like there was going to be some kind of revelation about the resistance society, that they were not what they seemed. And while there are some surprises, it also felt like Ms. Kuang could have gone a bit further and been a bit bolder. I also feel like Ms. Kuang could have been a bit more subtle about the anti-colonialist message. Don't get me wrong, I agree with her perspective, but I felt like saying "yes, I get it already" at a number of points.I loved every bit of discussion about linguistics and translation.

It’s not an easy task to review a book that is such a monolith of ideas. I loved the whole vision and the narrative voice - a genuinely vivid and energetic mind telling a truly compelling story. The various references to Dickens are a clear indication of the writers love of great imaginative storytelling and the book is exactly that. A very intelligent book that deserves reading for its uncompromising attack on the British Empire and its rewriting of history through the eyes of four young men and women trapped in its system of double standards and hypocrisy. Vast in its vision and genuinely moving in the choices its characters make. Occasionally such truths are slightly tarnished by echoes of fashionable politically correctness while the strength of the book’s ideas and characters in themselves establish an unquestionable critique and system of values that does the job far more effectively than any dogmatic adherence to cancel culture or the like. A real standout book that despite being labeled as a YA novel involves a widely-read adult reader such as myself. Very much recommended.

All the stars, 10 out of 10, a hundred out of a hundred.I will never trust anyone who doesn’t like this book.This is a masterpiece. There are so many important topics that were in the past and still are very essential.Also on languages and translations there’s so much in this book that i always believed. The magic system was fascinating.The audiobook is also a masterpiece, the narrators did really good.

I won't comment on the novel per se, because literarily it's great, but I'm INCREDIBLY DISAPPOINTED with the quality of the edition. I bought the novel in hardcover, hoping for the durability and solidity of the edition. Unfortunately, I found that despite the hardcover, the spine of the book is glued, not sewn, and the pages (every single one of them!) begin to fall off the spine after one flip. I fear that by the time I get to the end of the novel, they will have fallen off completely.I ordered the English-language edition specifically because of the hardcover, as in my country it only comes out in an integral binding. This turned out to be a big mistake, as the quality of the Polish edition is nevertheless much better.(Rating for novel itself - 5/5)

Ein Junge wird aus einer schweren Kindheit herausgezogen, um an einer Schule in England Magie zu lernen. Zusammen mit seinen Freunden bekämpft er das Böse.Nein, mit Harry Potter hat Babel nichts zu tun - und das ist auch gut so. Wo Harry potter eher einen "Make up as we go"-Ansatz verfolgt, merkt man bei Babel, dass eine enorme Menge Recherche in das Buch eingeflossen ist - und das World Building ist entsprechend dicht und kohärent:Babel spielt in einem viktorianischen England zur Zeit der Industrialisierung. Nur wird diese nicht durch Watts Dampfmaschine getragen, sondern durch Magie. Die Magie basiert auf Silber, das aus den Kolonien stammt, und auf Ungenauigkeiten in Übersetzungen zwischen zwei Sprachen. Entsprechend sind auch Englisch gebildete Übersetzer aus den Kolonien wichtige Bestandteile der Maschine - und genau das ist das Problem. Wo Sexismus und Rassimus reagieren, gehören auch die wichtigsten Säulen nicht dazu.In diesem Umfeld bewegt sich das Buch, entsprechend politisch wird die Geschichte. Dabei ist die Story nicht nur dicht, sondern auch spannend, denn die Autorin kann sehr gut schreiben.Ich finde es immer ein bisschen Schade, dass "Alternative Geschichte" fast immer bedeutet "Jemand anderes hat eine Schlacht gewonnen", gerade weil Geschichte so im allgemeinen nicht funktioniert. Babel erzählt wirklich in einer alternativen Geschichte und macht gerade deswegen wichtige Aussagen zu unserer. Und ist nebenbei ein verdammt spannendes, originelles Buch.

Loved the book but was a bit scared off by the historic accurate rascism and sexism