THERE ARE THOSE WHO FALL HARD FOR Oxford. And there are those whose feelings are more ambivalent. While she’s an Oxford graduate who earlier this year returned to the city of dreaming spires to give the JRR Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature, Rebecca F Kuang falls into the latter category.
“I have a lot of conflicted feelings about Oxford,” she says. “On the one hand, it’s such a beautiful illusion. I think a common theme in many dark academia novels – Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, for example – involves longing and desire to be a part of this beautiful, aesthetic, deeply intellectual world. But the fact of the matter is that that world is only accessible to certain bodies. That’s something I felt acutely when I was at Oxford.”
Not only was Kuang an American abroad but she was also “a woman of colour at an institution that… still hasn’t done very much to reckon with its colonial roots”. The tensions here are front and centre in Kuang’s new novel Babel, a critique of Oxford set in an alternate 19th-century Oxford where the Royal Institute of Translation, aka Babel, is a key institution of empire. Not only is Babel a world centre of translation but it’s a place where lecturers and students practice silver-working, in which silver bars’ magical powers are manifested through translation.
NO SUCH THING AS AN ACCIDENT
Esta historia es de la edición September 2022 de SFX UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición September 2022 de SFX UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
THE DYING DAYS
RUSSELL T DAVIES, NCUTI GATWA AND MILLIE GIBSON LOOK AHEAD TO THE TWOPART SEASON FINALE
BEWARE THE DUCHESS!
Oh, it’s been such a laugh.
Demon Daze
Archie launches its first Premium Event as Judgment Day comes to Riverdale
JEDI SLAYER ONE
A STAR WARS MURDER MYSTERY FROM THE CREATOR OF RUSSIAN DOLL? SFX GOES BACK TO THE HIGH REPUBLIC ERA TO INVESTIGATE THE CASE OF THE ACOLYTE
Children Of The Evolution
Nu-heroes assemble in Marvel's brave new Ultimates universe
Atlas Smith And J-Lo
Atlas director Brad Peyton on his intergalactic AI actioner
Pride Of Place
Wedding bells ring for Mystique and Destiny in this year's Marvel Voices: Pride
EightLegged Freak
The director of the Alieninfluenced Sting talks about his spider horror
Beauty And The Beast
Director Bertrand Bonello talks his vision of an artificial tomorrow in The Beast
Paint It Black
The Orphan Black story continues with Echoes, a new series set 30 years after the original