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Author Rebecca Kuang on her novel Babel, or on the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators Revolution
Sinica Podcast
English - December 29, 2022 19:19 - 52 minutes - 47.9 MB - ★★★★★ - 545 ratingsBusiness Society & Culture china news international relations china economy china politics sichuan shenzhen shanghai politics news hangzhou Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
This week on Sinica, Kaiser chats with Rebecca Kuang (who writes under the name R.F. Kuang), the author of the best-selling historical fantasy novel Babel. Set in the 1830s in England, the novel’s Chinese-born protagonist sets out to prevent a war with China over the opium trade. It’s a novel about the industrial revolution, labor activism, revolution, and — surprisingly — language, etymology, and translation.
2:28 – On Rebecca's own connections to China and her anxieties about losing the Chinese language
8:27 – What historical insights Rebecca hoped her readers would take away from Babel
14:37 – Parallels between the U.K. of the early 19th century and the U.S. of the early 21st
20:26 – Refections on revolution and revolutionaries
25:48 – Silver working: the magic system in Babel and its relation to language
30:37 – Issues with translation theory presented in the book
38:04 – How Rebecca’s background in debate influenced her writing style
45:03 – Rebecca's forthcoming novel Yellowface
A transcript of this podcast will be available soon at TheChinaProject.com.
Recommendations:
Rebecca: The film Banshees of Inisherin and other works by its director, Martin McDonagh, including the dark comedy In Bruges (2008).
Kaiser: The new novel by Cormac McCarthy The Passenger, and a review of it by James Wood in The New Yorker.
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