mario started reading Babel: An Arcane History by R. F. Kuang
Babel: An Arcane History by R. F. Kuang
Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.
Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is …
I loved this (I read his later book The Stolen Bicycle first, which made me pick up this one).
It might be one of the saddest, most miserable, and yet most beautiful books I've read. A mixture of magical realism, environmental concerns, and Taiwanese indigenous culture, it was written over 10 years ago, and the environmental issues it predicts have only gotten worse and more hopeless since. In the end it's down to a small black and white rescue cat to give the main protagonist a reason to keep living, which seems apt.
