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I thought, “I think we can beat the Bible.” I always just wanted to title the book “Babel.” I was told that you can’t just name a novel “Babel” because then it would have to compete with the Bible for SEO results. “Babel” has an intriguing subtitle: “Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution.” How did that come to be?Ī. Just by the numbers, this perception is hilariously wrong, but it’s shockingly pervasive. This is a problem that pervades every aspect of publishing: from who owns the publishing companies, to who gets hired on the editorial level, who is able to work in New York on an intern salary without generational wealth, who becomes a gatekeeper, who decides what stories are worthy of being elevated.Īnd then this reverse illusion that because there are a few publishing imprints and editors actively interested in stories by BIPOC writers, suddenly, it’s impossible to be published as a white writer. Since the 1970s, the percentage of books that come out each year by non-white authors is distressingly small. The most obvious reading is about racism in publishing. Could you talk a little about the issues that inspired it?Ī. I’ve been seeing buzz on social media about your new novel, “Yellowface,” which is about a white author who steals an unfinished manuscript written by a more successful Asian author and publishes as her own. But Robin soon learns that the work he’s trainingto pursue is a betrayal to his homeland. The bar manifests what is lost in translation, maintaining the technology that powers normal life in England. In the world of “Babel,” silver-workers create magical effects by writing a word or phrase on a silver bar and the equivalent in a different language on the bar’s other side. When he fulfills his calling to join a special program for translators, he learns the art of silver-working. Set in a reimagined 1830s England, the historical fantasy novel follows a young boy named Robin Swift at Oxford. Her newest novel, “Babel,” was released this week and calls back to her roots, as a student and a Chinese-English translator. Kuang, is known for the “Poppy War” trilogy, which is set in historical China and loosely based on 20th-century Chinese history. The Hugo Award-winning author, who writes as R.F. After undergrad at Georgetown, she completed two Master’s programs - Contemporary Chinese Studies at Oxford, Chinese Studies at Cambridge - and currently, she’s pursuing her PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale. Kuang doesn’t remember a time before she was in school.