Monthly book discussion with Sara Azarmi. The BookTok Book Club, led by U.S. native speaker Sara Azarmi, discusses popular TikTok books during monthly meetings. Afterwards, a funny video is created about the books and shared with the book community on TikTok. The book club will meet in the d.a.i. library at 6:30 p.m. every last Thursday (with tea and cookies!) and talk about current authors such as Sarah J. Maas, Emily Henry, Gabrielle Zevin, Donna Tartt, or Colleen Hoover. All selected books will be available in the d.a.i. (online) library. Interested parties can find the d.a.i. TikTok channel at www.dai-tuebingen.de/tiktok. BookTok, a subgroup on the social media platform TikTok, focuses on analyzing and discussing popular literature. The focus is particularly on young adult novels, fantasy, and romances.
29.2.: Babel (2022), R.F. Kuang
21.3.: Bunny (2019), Mona Awad
In English
Location: d.a.i. library
Admission: free
From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire:
1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.
For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .
Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?