Babel

Babel is set in a fantastical version of Oxford in the 1830s, in a world where Britain’s economic and colonial supremacy runs on magical silver bars. The bars draw their power from what is lost in translation between languages. An orphan from Canton is brought to England by Richard Lovell, a professor at Babel, and takes the name Robin Swift.

Lovell has him tutored in Latin, Greek and Mandarin to prepare him for admission. The novel is a critique of British imperialism, racism and capitalism, and of the part that scholarship and language play in sustaining them.