Anika’s Reviews > Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution > Status Update

“‘Oh those white people have small hearts who can only feel for themselves.’” - Mary Prince, The History of Mary Prince

“Still, something did not seem right, and Robin could tell from Victoire's and Ramy's faces that they thought moment to realize what it was that grated on him, and when he did, it would bother him constantly, now and thereafter; it would seem a great paradox, the fact that after everything they had told Letty, all the pain they had shared, she was the one who needed comfort.”

"'It just doesn't feel...' Robin took a deep breath. 'It doesn't feel like we have the right to be alive.'"

"It sounded so abstract - just categories of use, exchange, and value - until it wasn't; until you realized the web you lived in the exploitations your life-style demanded, until you saw looming above it all the spectre of colonial labour and colonial pain. "

“Professor Lovell scoffed. ‘Never. I look at those men, and I think of the vast difference between us. I am where I am because I believe in knowledge and scientific progress, and I have used them to my advantage. They are where they are because they have stubbornly refused to move forward with the future. Men like that don’t scare me. Men like that make me laugh.’”

“English did not just borrow words from other languages; it was stuffed to the brim with foreign influences, a Frankenstein vernacular. And Robin found it incredible, how this country, whose citizens prided themselves so much on being better than the rest of the world, could not make it through an afternoon tea without borrowed goods”

“For example: ‘You know how the French refer to an unfortunate situation? Triste comme un repas sans fromage. Sad as a meal without cheese. Which is, really, the state of all English cheese.”