BBC推薦：2月必讀書單

喬治•桑德斯《林肯在中陰》

Saunders, a masterful short story writer, takes a well-known tragedy in the life of one of the most honoured US presidents as the jumping-off point for his first novel. Abraham Lincoln's son Willie died of typhoid at the age of 11 in 1862. The president mourned as the Civil War raged, its outcome unclear, and with daily reports of rising casualties. Saunders uses the Tibetan Buddhist concept of 'the bardo' - that netherworld between life and death - to centre his mosaic of voices within a vision of grief captured at the cemetery where Willie is buried. Saunders delicately reveals a connection between a father's grief and Lincoln's strategic decision to "be brave and resolve the thing."

亞伯拉罕•林肯是最負盛名的美國總統(tǒng)之一，短篇小說大師桑德斯以他廣為人知的悲劇故事作為其長篇小說的起點。林肯的兒子威利在1862年死于傷寒，年僅11歲。就在林肯沉浸在喪子之痛之時，美國內(nèi)戰(zhàn)爆發(fā)，戰(zhàn)局未定，每日傷亡報告不斷攀升。桑德斯通過藏傳佛教里的“中陰(人死后以至往生輪回某一道為止的一段時期內(nèi)亡者的靈體)”概念來呈現(xiàn)威利墓地上的悲傷幻象。桑德斯細膩地揭示了林肯作為父親的悲傷和他決定“勇敢面對，解決問題”的關鍵決定之間的聯(lián)系。

Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, The Girl from the Metropol Hotel

柳德米拉•彼得魯舍夫斯卡婭《來自首都酒店的女孩》

Petrushevskaya, a celebrated author in Russia, was born in 1938 across the street from the Kremlin in the Metropol Hotel, Moscow's "most famed residential building". While she was an infant, many members of her family of intellectuals were arrested and executed as "enemies of the people". This ushered in a childhood of severe deprivation, starvation and isolation. She eats from the neighbour's garbage and can't go to school in winter because she has no shoes. Yet Petrushevskaya narrates with joy swimming in the Volga, her grandmother's retelling of classics by Gogol from memory and watching Rossini's The Barber of Seville after climbing up the outside of the opera house.

俄羅斯著名作家彼得魯舍夫斯卡婭1938年生于克里姆林宮街對面的都市酒店，這里是莫斯科“最有名的住宅”。在彼得魯舍夫斯卡婭還是個嬰兒的時候，家族中的許多知識分子遭到逮捕，被當成“人民公敵”處決。這讓她在童年處境窮困、忍饑挨餓、飽受孤立。她從鄰居家的垃圾中找吃的，因為沒有鞋穿冬天沒法上學。然而彼得魯舍夫斯卡婭在小說中講述的是在伏爾加河歡樂地游泳、祖母憑借記憶講果戈理的經(jīng)典故事，以及趴在歌劇院的墻上偷看羅西尼的歌劇《塞維利亞的理發(fā)師》的故事。

Katie Kitamura, A Separation Katie Kitamura

《一場分居》

The opening to Kitamura's third novel is pitch-perfect: "It began with a telephone call from Isabella. She wanted to know where Christopher was." Isabella's son Christopher and his wife, the narrator, have kept their six-month marital separation a secret. Now he has disappeared. And his lies and betrayals are coming undone. The wife flies to Athens to track him down, determined to ask for a divorce. A Separation is an atmospheric and emotionally sophisticated novel that reads like a taut Patricia Highsmith thriller.

Kitamura第三部小說的開頭堪稱完美：“故事始于伊莎貝拉的一個電話。她想知道克里斯托弗在哪里。”伊莎貝拉的兒子克里斯托弗和他的妻子(故事主人公)隱瞞了他們已經(jīng)分居六個月的事實。如今，克里斯托弗消失了，他的謊言和背叛即將暴露。他的妻子飛往雅典尋找他，決定要和丈夫離婚。這部小說情節(jié)跌宕、情感復雜，讀起來就像是一部情節(jié)緊湊的帕特里夏•海史密斯式驚悚片。

Steve Erickson, Shadowbahn

史蒂夫•埃里克森《Shadowbahn》

A lorry driver driving through South Dakota in 2021 sees the World Trade Center's twin towers that fell two decades earlier looming up against the "forbidding Badlands horizon". Soon, a gawking crowd has gathered, drawn by the spectacle dubbed the "American Stonehenge", and this soon includes Parker and Zema, who take a side trip toward the Towers on their way to Michigan to visit their mother. In this audacious futuristic novel, Erickson takes on American myth and history, pushing our imaginative borders along ever more shadowy faultlines.

2021年，一名卡車司機開車經(jīng)過南達科塔州時看到20年前坍塌的世貿(mào)中心雙子塔樓浮現(xiàn)在一片可怕的不毛之地上。很快，被稱為“美國巨石陣”的奇觀吸走了一群圍觀群眾。帕克和澤馬在前往密歇根看望母親的路上順路到雙子塔旅游，不久他們也被卷入其中。在這部大膽的科幻小說中，作者埃里克森把美國神話和歷史交融在一起，沿著越來越神秘的斷裂層不斷突破讀者想象力的邊界。

Glenn Frankel, High Noon

格倫•弗倫克爾《正午》

High Noon - the Gary Cooper Western whose title, since its release in 1952, has connoted "a moment of truth when a good man must confront evil" - was shot in 32 days during the era of the Hollywood Blacklist. Frankel, a Pulitzer Prize winner, describes the consequences of the blacklist on the film industry, including its effect on the film's writer, Carl Foreman, whose career was damaged because he refused to cooperate. Frankel makes the climate of suspicion and fear in Hollywood palpable.

《正午》——自1952年上映以來，這部加里•庫珀的西部片的名字總讓人想到“一個好人不得不對抗邪惡的一刻”。該片拍攝于好萊塢的“黑名單時代”，僅用了32天。普利策獲獎作者弗倫克爾描述了黑名單對電影行業(yè)的巨大影響，其中包括電影《正午》的編劇卡爾•福爾曼受到的影響。由于拒絕合作，福爾曼的事業(yè)被毀于一旦。弗倫克爾讓讀者感受到好萊塢當時充斥著懷疑和恐懼的氛圍。

Anders Rydell, The Book Thieves

安德斯•李戴爾《偷書賊》

Less well-known than the Nazi party's systematic looting of artworks from the countries they invaded and their attacks on literature through book burnings and persecution of Jewish and leftist writers was their secret plundering of libraries all over Europe. The Third Reich's goal was to capture the right to shape history by stealing, owning and twisting words stored in the libraries, archives, history and memories of Nazi enemies. Rydell, a Swedish editor and journalist, crosses Europe to investigate "the most extensive book theft in the history of the world" and reports on ongoing restitution efforts. Translated from the Swedish by Henning Koch, this is a chilling reminder of Hitler's twisted power.

相比于大規(guī)模掠奪被侵略國家的藝術品、焚毀書籍破壞文學作品、迫害猶太人和左翼作家等臭名昭著的行為，納粹秘密掠奪歐洲圖書館的行為鮮為人知。第三帝國的目標是竊取、占有、篡改存放在圖書館的檔案、史書以及納粹敵人回憶錄，以借機歪曲歷史。瑞典新聞編輯兼記者李戴爾穿越歐洲，調(diào)查了“世界歷史上規(guī)模最大的書籍盜竊行為”，并報道了持續(xù)進行的恢復工作。本書由亨寧•科赫翻譯自瑞典語，這本書提醒著人們希特勒扭曲歷史的能力令人心驚。

Vivek Shanbhag, Ghachar Ghochar

維韋克•尚貝格《心結(jié)》

The first of Shanbhag's eight novels to be translated into English follows one tight-knit family - the narrator, his parents, uncle, sister and wife - through an economic rise that causes surprising disruptions. After his father is forced into early retirement, "the whole family stuck together, like a single body across the tightrope of our circumstances." The uncle comes to the rescue, starting a small firm that buys spices in bulk from Kerala and sells them to local grocers. With his profits, the family moves from a small house in the teeming lower-middle-class area of Bangalore to a modern house on the other side of the city. But despite rising fortunes, their lives become increasingly knotted up. Shanbhag's concise novel gives "one story, many sides."

這是尚貝格的八部小說中首部被翻譯成英文的作品。故事圍繞著一個關系密切的家庭(主人公、他的父母、叔叔、姐姐和他的妻子)展開：隨著經(jīng)濟狀況的好轉(zhuǎn)，一家人的關系意外破裂。當主人公的父親被迫提前退休后，“整個家庭團結(jié)在一起，好像成為一個人，一起度過面前的險境。”這時叔叔的出現(xiàn)讓情況有所好轉(zhuǎn)，他開了一家小公司，從喀拉拉邦進購香料賣給當里的雜貨店。叔叔賺錢后，這一家從班加羅爾熱鬧的中下層居住區(qū)的小房子搬到城市另一邊的現(xiàn)代化住宅里。雖然生活越來越富有，一家人之間“心結(jié)”卻越來越多。尚貝格這篇簡潔的小說“從多個側(cè)面呈現(xiàn)了一個故事”。

Stephen O'Shea, The Alps

斯蒂芬•奧謝《阿爾卑斯山》

O'Shea's enthralling summertime road trip through the Alps begins on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland and ends in Italy, at the Adriatic port of Trieste. He reports on scores of daunting hairpin turns, awe-inspiring peaks and colourful fellow travelers, and muses on the Alpine locations of multiple James Bond films. He also adroitly sketches the historic spots he passes – the Swiss lakeside villa where Mary Shelley conceived Frankenstein in 1816, Mozart's birthplace, the Austrian salt mine where Nazis hid thousands of priceless art treasures. Breezy and informative, it a reminder of the ever-shifting attitudes toward mountains that have inspired poets and writers for centuries.

從瑞士日內(nèi)瓦湖岸到意大利里雅斯特亞得里亞海港，奧謝描述了一場迷人的阿爾卑斯山夏季旅行。他記錄了充滿驚險的盤山公路，壯麗的山峰以及各色的同行者，還發(fā)現(xiàn)了《007》電影在阿爾卑斯山的多個取景地。他還巧妙地描繪了所經(jīng)過的歷史遺跡——1816年瑪麗•雪萊在瑞士湖邊的別墅構(gòu)思出《科學怪人》、莫扎特的出生地、納粹藏了無數(shù)天價藝術品的奧地利鹽礦等等。這部作品文字優(yōu)美、信息豐富，讓人們想起幾個世紀以來作家和詩人對阿爾卑斯山不同的態(tài)度變化激發(fā)了他們的創(chuàng)作。

Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

克里斯蒂娜•貝克•克蘭《世界一隅》

Kline's new novel is inspired by Christina Olson, the woman in Andrew Wyeth's best-known painting, Christina's World. Christina, who lives in the house built by her ancestors in Cushing in the US state of Maine, has been left off-kilter from a childhood illness. Her bones and joints deteriorate over the years, and her dreams of escape end when a four-year relationship with a Harvard student ends. One day Wyeth, who spends his summers nearby, asks to use their house as a studio to paint. He and Christina have an instant bond, and she, her brother Al and the house become constant themes in his work over the decades. "Sometimes a sanctuary, sometimes a prison, that house on the hill has always been my home," Baker writes in this beautifully rendered portrait of a woman's interior life.

克蘭的新小說的靈感來自克里斯蒂娜•奧爾森，她是安德魯•威特著名畫作《克里斯蒂娜的世界》中的女人?？死锼沟倌染幼≡诰捯蛑輲煨恋淖嫦攘粝聛淼姆孔永?，她因童年疾病而身患殘疾，骨骼和關節(jié)多年來持續(xù)退化。她與一名哈佛大學生分手后，也失去了逃跑的夢想。直到有一天，一個叫韋思的人來她家附近過暑假，并想把他們的房子作為工作室來畫畫。他與克里斯蒂娜發(fā)生了一段親密關系。克里斯蒂娜和她的哥哥Al以及這所房子成為韋思數(shù)十年來的創(chuàng)作主題。克蘭描述了一個美麗女人的內(nèi)心生活，她在書中寫道：“那座房子有時是避難所，有時是監(jiān)獄，歸根到底，那座山上的房子始終是我的家。”

Ethel Rohan, The Weight of Him

埃塞爾•羅翰《他的體重》

Big Billy Brennan, the vulnerable man at the heart of Ethel Rohan's first novel, is mired in grief - his teenage son has just committed suicide. He's also gone up to 180kg and can't seem to stop eating. Days before returning to work as a quality inspector at a toy factory in rural Ireland, he begins walking a few laps around the house. He grows determined to wage a public campaign to lose half of his weight, and raise funds for suicide prevention. His parents, wife and three remaining children are aghast. Despite setbacks, he sticks to his plan. In heart-rending passages, Rohan captures the ways in which parents blame each other and themselves for the loss of a child, and the courage it takes to change.

埃塞爾•羅翰第一部小說的主人公是一個脆弱的大塊頭比利•布倫南。他因十幾歲的兒子剛剛自殺而深陷悲傷。他無法控制自己的飲食，體重也上升到180公斤。在回到愛爾蘭鄉(xiāng)下的玩具工廠當質(zhì)檢員的前幾天，他開始在房子周圍走上幾圈。他隨后決定發(fā)起一項公眾運動，以減掉自己一半的體重，并為預防自殺事業(yè)集資。布倫南的父母、妻子和另外三個孩子被他的舉動驚呆了。盡管困難重重，他始終堅持自己的計劃。書中的父母在失去孩子后彼此責備又深感自責，然后鼓起勇氣做出改變，羅翰的這種描寫方式十分虐心。