Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution

Acknowledgements

Babel is about infinite worlds of languages, cultures, and histories – many of which I do not know – and its writing would not have been possible without the friends who shared their knowledge with me. Many, many thanks are in order:

First, to Peng Shepherd, Ehigbor Shultz, Farah Naz Rishi, Sarah Mughal, and Nathalie Gedeon for helping me ensure that Robin, Ramy, and Victoire were written with detail and compassion. To Caroline Mann and Allison Resnick for their Classics expertise; to Sarah Forssman, Saoudia Ganiou, and De’Andre Ferreira for their help with translations; and to my dear professors at Yale – in particular Jing Tsu, Lisa Lowe, and Denise Ho – for shaping my thinking about coloniality, post-coloniality, and the bearing of language on power.

I am supported by the most wonderful teams at Harper Voyager on both sides of the pond. Thank you to my editors, David Pomerico and Natasha Bardon; as well as to Fleur Clarke, Susanna Peden, Robyn Watts, Vicky Leech, Jack Renninson, Mireya Chiriboga, Holly Rice-Baturin, and DJ DeSmyter.

Thank you to the artists who made Babel look the way it does: Nico Delort, Kimberly Jade McDonald, and Holly Macdonald.

Thank you also to Hannah Bowman, without whom none of this would be possible, and the entire team at Liza Dawson Associates – especially Havis Dawson, Joanne Fallert, Lauren Banka, and Liza Dawson.

Thank you to Julius Bright-Ross, Taylor Vandick, Katie O’Nell, and the Vaults & Garden cafe, who made those strange, sad months in Oxford bearable. And thank you to the New Haven homies – Tochi Onyebuchi, Akanksha Shah, and James Jensen – for the pizzas and the laughs. All hail the Great Egg.

Thank you to Tiff and Chris for helping run Coco’s Cocoa, a most wonderful interdimensional, magical dog-owned café at which most of this manuscript was written.

Thank you to Bennett, who was the best company I could have asked for during that long, lonely, terrible year in which Babel came together, and whose counsel shaped so many details of this story. He would like everyone to know that he named the book, as well as the Hermes Society, for while I have a sense for the literary, he has a sense for the awesome.

Finally, thank you to Mom and Dad, to whom I owe everything.