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R.F. Kuang Books

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Babel

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Katabasis

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The Poppy War

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Yellowface

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“Your brother likes to argue that the Jamaican slave revolt, failed though it was, is what impelled the British to legislate abolition. He's right, but only half right. See, the revolt won British sympathy because the leaders were part of the Baptist church, and when it failed, proslavery whites in Jamaica started destroying chapels and threatening missionaries. Those Baptists went back to England and drummed up support on the grounds of religion, not natural rights. My point being, abolition happened because white people found reasons to care - whether those be economic or religious. You just have to make them think they came up with the idea themselves. You can't appeal to their inner goodness. I have never met an Englishman I trusted to do the right thing out of sympathy.”

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Book:Babel
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“But, my God, I want to be back in the spotlight. You enjoy this delightful waterfall of attention when your book is the latest breakout success. You dominate the cultural conversation. You possess the literary equivalent of the hot hand. Everyone wants to interview you. Everyone wants you to blurb their book, or host their launch event. Everything you say matters. If you utter a hot take about the writing process, about other books, or even about life itself, people take your word for gospel. If you recommend a book on social media, people actually drive out that day to buy it.”

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Book:Yellowface
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“His hand went into the skimmer's hull, an inch from her head. She didn't flinch. She turned her head slowly, trying to pretend her heart wasn't slamming against her chest. 'You missed,' she said calmly. Nehza pulled his hand away from the hull. Blood trickled down his knuckles from four crimson fots. She should have been afraid, but when she searched his face, she couldn't find a shred of anger. Just fear. She had no respect for fear. 'I don't want to hurt you,' he said. 'Of, trust me.' Her lip curled. 'You couldn't.”

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Book:The Dragon Republic
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“See, a gun changes everything. It's not just about the impact, it's about what it signals." Griffin ran his fingers over the barrel, then spun around to point the gun at Robin. Robin jumped back. "Jesus-" "Scary, isn't it? Think, why is this more frightening than a knife?" Griffin did not move his arm. "It says I'm willing to kill you, and all I have to do is pull this trigger. I can kill at a distance, without effort. A gun takes all the hard work out of murder and makes it elegant. It shrinks the distance between resolve and action, you see?”

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Book:Babel
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“She's unbearable sometimes, yes. But she's not trying to be cruel. She's scared she isn't supposed to be here. She's scared everyone wishes she were her brother, and she's scared she'll be sent home if she steps even slightly out of line. Above all, she's scared that either of you might go down Lincoln's path. Go easy other, you two. You don't know how much of her behaviour is dictated by fear.”

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Book:Babel
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“Anyway', Anthony said ushering them away, 'that's Literature. One of the worst applications of Babel education, if you ask me.' 'You don't approve?' Robin asked. He shared Victoire's delight; a life spent on the fourth floor would be wonderful. 'Me? No.', Anthony chuckled, 'I'm here for silver-working. I think the Literature Department are an indulgent lot, as Vimal knows. See, the sad thing is they could be they could be the most dangerous scholars of them all, because they are the ones who really understand languages - know how they live and breathe or how they can make our blood pump, our skin prickle with just a turn of a phrase. But they are just too obsessed fiddling with their lovely images to bother with how all that living energy might be channelled into something far more powerful. I mean, of course, silver.”

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Book:Babel
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“With angry sulking men, the secret was holding your ground. You didn't get rebellious, no—that was asking for a slap to the face. But you didn't self-flagellate, either. When you acted like you ought to be whipped, that only confirmed to them that you should. One should never cower. The secret rather was to keep talking as if you deserved no punishment at all, and then to distract them with something they wanted more than they wanted to hurt you.”

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Book:Katabasis
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“Did you know Anthony was a slave?" Letty asked one night in hall. Unlike Victoire, she was determined to raise the issue at every opportunity; indeed, she was obsessed with Anthony's death in a way that felt uncomfortably, performatively righteous. "Or would have been. His master didn't want him freed when abolition took effect, so he was going to take him to America, and he only got to stay at Oxford because Babel paid for his freedom. Paid. Can you believe it?" Robin glanced to Victoire, but her face had not changed one bit. "Letty," she said very calmly, "I am trying to eat.”

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Book:Babel
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“Looking out over Oxford, Robin had the impression that the whole city was like a finely tuned music box, relying wholly on its silver gears to keep running; and that if the silver ever ran out, if these resonance rods ever collapsed, then the whole of Oxford would stop abruptly in its tracks. The bell towers would go mute, the cabs would halt on the roads, and the townsfolk would freeze in motion on the street, limbs lifted in midair, mouths open in midspeech.”

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Book:Babel
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“He quashed his memories too. His life in Canton - his mother, his grandparents, a decade of running about the docks - it all proved surprisingly easy to shed, perhaps because this passage was so jarring, the break so complete. He'd left behind everything he'd known. There was nothing to cling to, nothing to escape back to. His world now was Professor Lovell, Mrs. Piper, and the promise of a country on the other side of the ocean. He buried his past life, not because it was so terrible but because abandoning it was the only way to survive. He pulled on his English accent like a new coat, adjusted everything he could about himself to make it fit, and within weeks, wore it in comfort. In weeks, no one was asking him to speak a few words in Chinese for their entertainment. In weeks, no one seemed to remember he was Chinese at all.”

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Book:Babel
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“But the living are burdened with bodies. They make shadows, footprints. I would prefer that Athena were alive and stalking me, because then she would leave traces—public spottings, narrative inconsistencies, breadcrumbs of proof. The living can’t appear and disappear at will. The living can’t haunt you at every turn. Athena’s ghost has wormed its way into my every waking moment. Only the dead can be so constantly present.”

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Book:Yellowface
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“this was the worst thing that Professor Grimes had ever done to her - made her doubt she was a good scholar. He's destroyed her faith in her own ability to think, and to judge the results of her own thought, instead of turning to him at every step for confirmation. And it was just so unfortunate that it took his death for her to conceive, research and carry out an entire project on her own.”

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Book:Katabasis
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