This book was one of the most beautiful and victorious works of fiction I have ever read in my life. A triumph for the mind, a challenge for the identity and a necessary act of redemption for many. This book was all I could think about for the past two months. It clung to me like salt on skin after swimming in crystal clear waters, it made me spiral through a whirlwind of emotions. It made me feel invincible and glorious and at the same time, it made me grieve, it made me feel emptiness, and it made me uncomfortable and aware of it in the best/worst way possible.
It gave me everything and seized it away from me at the same time.
Every emotion I felt was incredibly vital for living and experiencing this book from beginning to end, engraving each word into my mind, for I will never wish to forget this heartbreakingly beautiful tale.
This story was crystal clear in showing the importance of words and knowledge.
Everything was meticulously put into place since the beginning, a machiavellian work of art. The mastery in building something so beautiful and destroying it with the same hands left me completely and utterly heartbroken.
While reading this book, I felt trapped in this gilded cage of choices and consequences.
“And even a gilded cage was still a cage” (p. 320).
I felt like an invisible yet essential spectator in the story, looming around Oxford and its secrets, chaperoning Robin through victories and losses like Virgil did to Dante, through golden days and darkest hours.
The characters were all so real, so fragile yet stronger than anything that was hurled at them and so heartbreakingly human. Robin…his presence, his mind, it felt alive beyond words, like he existed and made his mark on history. His life, plagued by indecision and missteps due to forces more powerful than him, at one point felt so tender, so delicate. Ramy was a beacon of hope and strength. Victoire was a survivor, an anchor for many. Letty…a necessary presence, rooted in something bigger than ideals.
“A dream; this was an impossible dream, this fragile, lovely, world in which, for the price of his convictions, he had been allowed to remain” (p. 275)
Yet, change and necessary violence and decisions ensued, and it set their world on fire.
It was like witnessing the moment before a huge cataclysmic wave recoiled on its path to scatter every single ounce of peace around him.
Violence was necessary for Robin to gain control of his life, his past and what was left of his future. The heartbreak I felt about his character came close to the suffering I only felt within myself. It was like a part of him resided within my heart, and it got brutally torn apart.
“Violence is the only language they understand because their system of extraction is inherently violent. Violence shocks the system. And the system cannot survive the shock” (p. 397)
One thing this book was able to do was challenge history and times.
I could not even begin to tell you the number of times I had to stop reading to wonder if this was all true. Wondering if Babel and its scholars, with its secrets and twisted games, truly lived and perished between the folds of unforgiven time.
At one point, towards the end, I felt like time stopped. I was completely seized by the enormity of what I was reading, something bigger than me, something that seeped deeper between the ink on paper, something so incredibly astounding to the mind I cannot quite believe I have had the privilege to even be allowed to read this book.
“He had never thought before about the lacuna of written history they existed in and the oppressive swath of denigrating narrative they fought against, and now that he did, it seemed insurmountable” (p.505)
R. F. Kuang did a marvellous work of research and delivery. My brain felt on fire as etymology and history rattled my very being in the most profoundly intellectual ways.
I don’t think I will be able to put into words (the irony of this sentence) how much this book changed my life, for in a moment of emotional stillness and suffering, I was challenged to imagine and live vicariously through words and people in search of something that I cannot quite pinpoint yet, but “Ask me a little later, and I’ll tell you”.
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