I have done something unusual, and read a string of books in a row all published in the last three-ish years. Might as well write about them.
***
R.F. Kuang, Babel, or the Necessity of Violence, 2022
Chances are you've heard of this: at least around me, it was in lots of shop windows. The second-hand paperback I found drips with comments and recommendations (Blackwell's Book of the Year, New York Times bestseller, The Daily Mail's Best Book of 2022 - which is a reminder of how a given newspaper or broadcaster isn't altogether wedded to an ideology).
Differences in translation form a kind of magic; this has been used to fuel European imperialism. Babel details events in the Royal Institute of Translation in an only-just-alternate 1836 Oxford. A Chinese orphan is brought to Britain and raised there, seemingly solely for the purposes of working as a Translator.
You know how this ends from the title - or the string of excerpts on the inside over talking about revolution, empire and academia. I don't intend to dissect this more than needed.
Babel is engaging enough; it never exactly dragged. But it is a Hedgehog of a Book, not a Fox - in Isaiah Berlin's division. It does one thing, and it does it fairly well, and it keeps doing it.
It has a problem, in that it is a book narrated by an educated, intelligent and well-read woman who thinks you are very stupid. (I would not claim that this reflects Kuang.) Every reference must be spelled out in the footnotes - and most of those footnotes mention something that there's a good chance you've come across in a high middle-brow source somewhere, or express a position you've seen in a post-colonial Jeremiad prominently placed in a bookshop lobby. ("Did you know that British food is bland? What are they doing with all those spices?" &c, &c. More interesting - and perhaps more in line with the thrust of the plot - would be something like an older French response, that Les Rosbifs are unsubtle, undiscerning - indeed, unbalanced - with their use of seasonings.) This is not merely a view expressed by crusty reactionaries or terminally-online culture warriors, incidentally.
Here is where it nearly trips over its own tail (something which one would have thought afflicted Foxes more than Hedgehogs). It is not merely that Babel makes its argument obviously and forcefully, but that it does so the point of parody. A footnote mentions that University College has produced jurists for British-ruled India; very good. It gives their names as Robert Chambers, Edward West and William Jones; a suitable detail. It then feels obliged to tell you that all three were white - which is something that the reader (who has already encountered several strains of racism and other cultural frictions) had probably worked out for themselves already - they are highly placed men with Anglophone names in a country that was at least ninety percent white in the 1950s, even assuming notable flaws on the part of the surveys of the time.
This is the sort of thing that turns pathos to bathos quite quickly. 'This is a monstrous and abominable act!' might say the propagandist - which loses effectiveness quickly if the propagandist shows their hand: 'As senior commissar of the 1327th Rifle Company, I must say that this is a monstrous and abominable act!'
Yes, there are exceptions to the rule. A formal announcement of status makes sense to establish legitimacy - 'As a Constitutional Monitor of the Social Federation, I can no longer stand for this. Commander, by authority of Section 29 of the General Military Code, I relieve you of duty!' Likewise, a piece of Rhetoric may play on status: 'As a Constitutional Monitor of the Social Federation, I have studied X, read Y and fully endorse Z - but even the commonest Federal Trooper has seen A, felt B and sensed C - and so will know full well that Z.' And one may think of recommendations: 'The Central Office of the Corps of Constitutional Monitors recommends this motion picture for its high level of research and insight into the problem of M, the issue of N and the contemporary matter of O.' The aforementioned footnote doesn't manage any of these.
The general high quality of Babel makes flaws of this kind all the more apparent. I've seen this described as a nod to heavy-handed Victorian tomes, to which I can only say - those Victorian authors might have been projecting a world-view, but they weren't fighting a culture war.
Other issues are few, and some - like a 21st century-style Commemoration Ball in 1830s Oxford - are quite deliberate. There are some clumsy uses of language - thus, a reference to a force of soldiers supposed to be somewhat larger than a double-dozen as a platoon. An academic clergyman is referred to as 'Reverend Doctor Frederick Charles Plumptre' and not 'The Reverend Doctor Frederick Charles Plumptre' in a section when the additional word and syllable would have been entirely fitting; Plumptre's rank and status are being emphasised. Kuang has silver used in ways (like cleaning the water in London's canals) that would presumably lessen some of the urban blight and squalor that is later important. Likewise, silver is used for reasons it presumably need not be: silver for bells...which is a splendid passage until you think on it: is there a great convenience or magnificence or saving in using magical silver to keep bells in tune, that a decent bell-foundry couldn't provide? Ditto college towers, though the invocation of Babel makes some towers collapsing inevitable.
If I have to draw some conclusion ... well, the chances are, frankly, that you've read Babel or that you don't need to read it.
And leaping to another Vulpine dichotomy: Babel might be a lion to scare away wolves, but is not a fox to recognise traps. It is a book of the middle and the mainstream; it would happily confront a right-leaning academic or a classical liberal columnist in a widely-read journal. But I don't think it's ever contemplated the world of literate, articulate, widely-if-inconsistently-read, statistic-wielding (none of those thing are equal to Good, Virtuous or Correct) right wing commentators on, say, Substack. At least, not as a Primary Source. Perhaps Kuang will not object to being a Leonine Hedgehog.
***
Thomas Peermohamed Lambert, Shibboleth, 2025
This one does need a summary. Edward is an Oxford student in his second year; in a bid for social cachet, he starts making rather a lot of a long-dead Muslim grandfather in Zanzibar. Cue plaudits and female attention.
On its own, that sounds predictable: a half-hour sitcom, living or dying by the comedian's skill. Certainly not something that can cover the span of three terms. It is given staying power by Edward's misadventures in love, and the range of human misunderstandings, vulnerabilities and flaws - and by a degree of knowingness on the part of all the characters. They are frequently headstrong or scheming or prideful, but rarely ignorant.
The other thing that stops this being a one-trick pony is the range of side characters, aiding and abetting Edward's deception - including the Falstaffian Egyptian Youssef, a genuine Muslim. The various social justice activists are powerfully drawn, and get some decent stinging lines and self-awareness. Not that there aren't comic scenes drawing on the well-established (cliché?) image of the campus radical and xenophile. This isn't the only strong to Lambert's bow; the names, especially of minor characters are spectacular; Liberty Vanderbilt-Jackson is normal enough but see also Larry Pfister, Lolly Bunton, Francine Hogmany-Pung and (my favourite) Hepzibah Coulson-von Ribbentrop. The other great running joke is the string of absurdly named academic works: Borges: An Overdue Denunciation, Seas incarnadine: Shakespeare, Macbeth and the menstruating body, The Quality of Mercy is not Stained: Shylock and the Poetics of Bodily Drainage - the trick is to make them only just plausible - which leaves Anus Mirabilis: The Spirit of Freud in the Letters of San Juan de la Cruz out in the cold, alas.
To some extent this is like Waugh's Decline and Fall; Edward's shyness and biddability rather echoes Paul Pennyfeather. But Edward's story is a more personal one for Lambert.
It is also a more present one; the Trinity Term of Edward's second year begins with a clash between Israel and Hamas. This is intended as a novel of the moment, if with some themes of identity and social status that will last better than a political cartoon. It is present in one more way - Lambert is still writing, and he is even writing about Shibboleth, and has its characters in dialogues with the author. His thoughts on the relative success of his debut and the lack of understanding from his audience involved are interesting (and to some degree anticipated - hence the title), though I hope that this isn't a precedent. E.M. Forster writing about the lives of characters after the end of the novel years later in a little article is fine, but let's not have regular updates from authors.
People liked Shibboleth. I think that you will gain more from reading it than not.
***
Francis Spufford, Nonesuch, 2026
Nonesuch: once a palace, now a novel. The premise: it is 1939; an ambitious young lady in finance - Iris Hawkins - is drawn into a romantic encounter with a BBC television engineer. Unforeseen consequences draw her into a conflict with an equally young Mitford-esque fascist over a series of magical passages through time, and into meetings with angels.
Has Francis Spufford read any Tim Powers? If not, he really should do. Low-ish fantasy, in a historical setting with a veneer of science. Nonesuch isn't Declare, but they're not so very different - mid-twentieth century setting, trippy depictions. Spufford's angelic interventions may be the biggest difference. Other reviewers have noted the likeness to the mysteries of Charles Williams - which get a trifle too tied up in mystical visions to be really reliably good. Nonesuch also isn't Declare in that no-one is treating it as something for the Sci-Fi section of the bookshop; see this fulsome review.
Yes, Nonesuch isn't bad. Vivid characters (if ideas one has encountered many times before), and a beautifully rendered London, City and suburbs alike. Iris Hawkins is rich and well-rounded figure with interesting flaws, if occasionally one suspects that she is the rich and well-rounded figure with interesting flaws that the Guardian wants her to be rather than the rich and well-rounded figure with interesting flaws that the Telegraph wants her to be. But this impression doesn't crop up too often - the most obvious intrusion was Iris thinking (in 1940) that the War against Germany was a War to extinguish Fascism. She has been established to be well-informed and not exactly apolitical - but she isn't a partisan or steeped in a given political doctrine. My impression is that neither popular attitudes nor government propaganda had brought the latter notion into being in 1940.
There is the occasional similar note of authorial smugness - look how grounded so-and-so is, look how sex-positive this is (there is also one thoroughly predictable reveal about Iris's Jewish boss). This does not always get in the way of carefully sketched emotion (at least, for our protagonists). Perhaps it is a consequence of living in the internet age: it is so easy to dig out a response or a retort or an alternative take - that the lack of one seems so irritating, so half-finished.
I've seen reviews that get irritated by the poetry - I can't say I was. It does suffer from the fault of many a fantasy that introduces angels, in that none of the main characters even think about picking up any theology after meeting one! A few lines of dismissal would be enough, though perhaps that would only frustrate me.
Nonesuch ends on a cliffhanger: a sequel has been finished, though I don't know if there's a date for publication yet. I suspect that a full assessment will mean waiting for that sequel.
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