samia’s Reviews > Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution > Status Update
samia
is 64% done
“You have pretoogjes,’ Professor De Vreese observed.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Pretoogjes.’ Professor De Vreese gestured at his face. ‘Fun eyes. A Dutch word. Twinkling eyes, shifting eyes. We use it to describe children who are up to no good.”
— Feb 09, 2026 12:51PM
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Pretoogjes.’ Professor De Vreese gestured at his face. ‘Fun eyes. A Dutch word. Twinkling eyes, shifting eyes. We use it to describe children who are up to no good.”
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samia’s Previous Updates
samia
is 75% done
“Robin gazed at the curve of Babel against the moonlight, at the faint silver glow cast off by its many reinforcements. He had a sudden, very clear vision of the tower in ruins. He wanted it to shatter. He wanted it to, for once, feel the pain that had made possible its rarefied existence. ‘I want it to crumble.’
Victoire’s throat pulsed ‘I want it to burn.”
— Feb 11, 2026 07:12AM
Victoire’s throat pulsed ‘I want it to burn.”
samia
is 61% done
“It’s called yánghuò,’* said Robin. ‘That’s what she called the opium. Yáng means “foreign”, huò means “goods”. Yánghuò means “foreign goods”. That’s how they refer to everything here. Yáng people. Yáng guilds. Yánghuòre – an obsession with foreign goods, with opium. And that’s me. That’s coming from me. I’m yáng.”
— Feb 08, 2026 07:09AM
samia
is 51% done
“He knew when to play a lascar, a houseboy, a prince. He learned when to flatter and when to engage in self-deprecation. He could have written a thesis on white pride, on white curiosity. He knew how to make himself an object of fascination while neutralizing himself as a threat. He fine-tuned the greatest of all tricks, which was to swindle an Englishman into looking at him with respect.”
— Feb 06, 2026 06:17AM
samia
is 38% done
“But the Holy Word, it turned out, was both unpredictable and unforgiving on silver. There was a desk in the north wing of the eighth floor that no one dared approach because it still occasionally emitted smoke from an unseen source. There, it was rumoured, some foolish graduate fellow had attempted to translate on silver the name of God.”
— Feb 03, 2026 01:27PM
