New Zealand Listener

War of words

BABEL: AN ARCANE HISTORY, by RF Kuang (HarperCollins, $35)

Babel is Rebecca Kuang’s fourth book, the first following her bleak military-fantasy Poppy Wars trilogy, which was loosely based on the Second Sino-Japanese War.

This novel is grounded in experience – Kuang emigrated from Guangzhou, China, to the

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