How long does it take to read Babel : Or the Necessity of Violence?
Babel : Or the Necessity of Violence by R. F. Kuang, Michel Pagel takes about 10 hours 35 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 10 hours 35 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2022. 577 pages, about 158,675 words.
22 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 17 hours 38 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 10 hours 35 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 6 hours 37 minutes |
The page count is the median across 15 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire. 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 for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization. For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping 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?
Subjects: Translators, Fiction, Chinese, Imperialism, Magic, History
