BBC推薦：五月必讀書單

麗莎•柯 《離去的人》

Ko's first novel, awarded the 2016 Pen/Bellwether Award for Socially Engaged Fiction, follows Peilan, an adventurous teenager from the village of Minjiang in China to New York, via Bangkok, Amsterdam and Toronto. There, as Polly, she works 13-hour shifts in a garment factory and hopes to pay off $47,000 to the loan shark in a matter of years. (She understands the rules: "Pay now or disappear forever.") But she's pregnant by a neighbour back home, and her new son complicates her life beyond repair. Polly disappears when her son Deming is 10 years old. He is adopted by a professorial couple upstate, but he can't forget his mother and yearns to know what happened. Ko traces the disruptions of immigration and the complexities of first-generation Americans with meticulous detail and sensitivity. (Credit: Algonquin)

麗莎•柯的首部小說《離鄉(xiāng)人》獲得了2016年美國筆會社會類小說先鋒獎。小說主人公佩蘭是一名闖蕩的少女，她從中國閩江村途徑曼谷、阿姆斯特丹、多倫多前往紐約。在那里，她化名波莉，在一家制衣廠每天工作13小時，希望能在幾年內(nèi)還清47000美元(約合人民幣32萬元)的高利貸。(她清楚借高利貸的規(guī)矩：要么立刻還錢，要么永遠消失)。但是她懷上了一個老家鄰居的孩子，而兒子誕生帶來的麻煩徹底毀了她的生活。波莉在兒子戴明10歲的時候消失了。戴明被北部的一對夫婦收養(yǎng)，但是他無法忘記自己的母親，他渴望知道發(fā)生了什么。柯通過細膩敏銳的細節(jié)描寫探索了移民問題的混亂和美國一代移民的復(fù)雜性。(來源：阿爾岡昆出版社)

César Aira, The Little Buddhist Monk & The Proof

塞薩爾•艾拉《小和尚》和《證據(jù)》

Two distinctly different novellas, translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor, show the range of this Argentine author of more than 90 books, known for playful experimentation, narrative tension and bite. In the first, a Korean monk meets a French photographer obsessed with "culturally charged spaces" and his wife. He offers to become their guide to Buddhist temples. Soon it seems he's ushering them into a parallel world and they may not be able to find a way back. In The Proof, two punk lesbians try to pick up a 16-year-old girl walking near Plaza Flores in Buenos Aires. With ice cream, witty interrogation and a supermarket heist the two gradually pull her into their orbit. Aira has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. (Credit: New Directions)

阿根廷作家塞薩爾•艾拉的《小和尚》和《證據(jù)》由尼克•凱斯特翻譯，這兩本風(fēng)格迥異的小說顯示了作者寬泛的題材涉獵，艾拉的小說超過90部，以創(chuàng)意有趣、敘事富有張力和感染力著稱。在《小和尚》中，一個韓國僧人遇到了癡迷于“文化空間”的法國攝影師和他的妻子。他提議做向?qū)麄內(nèi)シ鸾趟聫R。很快，這位僧人似乎正把他們帶進一個可能找不到出路的平行空間里。在《證據(jù)》中，兩個女同小混混試圖在布宜諾斯艾利斯的弗洛雷斯廣場上搭訕一名路過的16歲少女。冰淇淋、機智的套話和一場超市搶劫案將讓兩人慢慢將少女拉入了她們的生活軌道。艾拉已經(jīng)入圍布克國際文學(xué)獎。(來源：新方向出版社)

Tracy Chevalier, New Boy

特蕾西•雪佛蘭《新來的男孩》

Chevalier's retelling of Othello builds tension effortlessly. She sets her tale of love, jealousy, racism and violence in the 1970s in Washington DC, her hometown. O (for Osei), a Ghanian diplomat's son, is entering his fourth school in six years. It's an all-white school where his presence is a shock. The first to notice him is Dee, the most popular girl in sixth grade. By lunch time O has shown himself to be a powerful kickball player and caressed Dee's cheek on the playground. Ian – the shrewdest, most calculating student in the class – spots the attraction between Dee and the new boy, and vows to destroy it. By the end of one school day, Ian has set Dee and O against each other, and orchestrated shocking violence. (Credit: Hogarth)

雪佛蘭的《新來的男孩》改寫自《奧賽羅》，小說輕而易舉地制造了緊張感。她將這個關(guān)于愛情、嫉妒、種族主義和暴力的故事的背景設(shè)在上世紀70年代的華盛頓，那里也是她的家鄉(xiāng)。奧塞是一個加納外交官的兒子，他在6年內(nèi)換了4家學(xué)校。這一次是一所白人學(xué)校，而他的存在讓人意外。第一個注意到他的人是迪伊。她是6年級最受歡迎的女孩。奧賽在午餐時間證明自己是一個強壯的足球運動員，還在操場上輕撫了迪伊的臉頰。伊恩是班級里最精明最會算計的學(xué)生，他發(fā)現(xiàn)了迪伊和新來的男生之間的火花，并發(fā)誓要毀掉它。在一天放學(xué)時，伊恩讓迪伊和奧賽反目，并謀劃了一場令人震驚的暴力事件。(來源：霍加斯出版社)

Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy: A Memoir

帕翠莎•洛克伍德《神父爸爸回憶錄》

Poet Patricia Lockwood's father was a Catholic priest, ordained after fitting through an ecclesiastical loophole – he was a married Lutheran minister who converted to Catholicism, thus eligible to apply to Rome for a dispensation, study for the priesthood and be ordained while keeping his wife and children. He was also "congenitally naughty", she writes in this probing and often hilarious memoir, which begins when she and her husband Jason, "penniless and exhausted", spend a year living with her eccentric parents in his Kansas City rectory. The flow of memory and meditation that follows careens between her girlhood and now, when she's been dubbed the "smutty metaphor queen" by the New York Times. And the beginnings of that poetic gift? Lockwood simply describes it as "that jolt of connection when the language turns itself inside out, when two words suddenly profess they're related to each other, or wish to be married, or were in league all along." (Credit: Riverhead)

詩人帕翠莎•洛克伍德的父親是一名天主教神父，他是鉆了基督教會的空子才被任命為天主教神父。在成為天主教徒前，他是一個已婚的路德教會牧師。因此，他有資格申請到羅馬獲得特許，學(xué)習(xí)成為神父，并在有妻兒的情況下獲得任免。洛克伍德的回憶錄內(nèi)容深入而幽默，她在書中寫道，自己的父親還是個“生性頑劣”的人。開始寫這本書時，洛克伍德和丈夫杰森“身無分文、精疲力竭”，他們在堪薩斯城的娘家和她古怪的父母住了一年。從少女時代起，她就從記憶中迸發(fā)出沉思，直到現(xiàn)在，洛克伍德已被《紐約時報》稱為“葷段子隱喻女王”。她什么時候開啟作詩天賦的呢?洛克伍德形容“那種開竅的感覺出現(xiàn)時，兩個單詞會突然自動聯(lián)系在一起，或想要結(jié)合，或者一直連在一起，那些語句會自己蹦出來。”(來源：河源出版社)

Antonio Di Benedetto, Nest in the Bones

安東尼奧•迪•班內(nèi)德托《以骨為巢》

This dark, idiosyncratic collection is the first in English by the writer Roberto Bolano called "one of the greatest writers of Latin America". Translated from the Spanish by Martina Broner, it includes work from his early days in Argentina, where he was imprisoned and tortured during the 'Dirty War', through his exile in Spain. In the title story, a young boy turns his head into a nest of birds – "blissful sparrows, canaries and partridges" – who are supplanted by "unaccountably voracious" vultures. "They hurt dreadfully, they hurt down to the bone," he writes. In other stories, an imprisoned man dreams that the guard won't let him rest, a man returned from exile feels like a stranger in his homeland, and Di Benedetto makes a sly reference to Borges, who, along with Pirandello and Dostoevsky, were early influences. (Credit: Archipelago Books)

這部暗黑、怪異的作品集是作家羅貝托•波拉尼奧的首部英文作品。他被譽為“最偉大的拉丁美洲作家之一”。該書由瑪?shù)倌?bull;布羅內(nèi)爾翻譯，包含波拉尼奧早年在阿根廷的作品，在“骯臟戰(zhàn)爭”期間，他曾被囚禁折磨。書中還包括他被流放西班牙時的作品。在本書的同名故事中，一個小男孩兒把自己的頭頂變成了“無憂無慮的麻雀、金絲雀、鷓鴣”的鳥巢。而它們卻被一群“莫名貪婪的”禿鷹取而代之。他寫道：“禿鷹殘忍地傷害他，傷害到骨子里。”在其他故事中，一個被囚禁的男人夢到警衛(wèi)不讓他休息，一個流放歸來的男人感覺他在祖國就是個陌生人。迪•班內(nèi)德托巧妙地提及博格斯，他和皮蘭德婁、陀斯妥也夫斯基對他有早期影響。(來源：群島圖書)

Charlie English, The Storied City

查理•英格里希《傳奇的城市》

The former head of international news at the Guardian, English begins his story with the near mythic quest by English explorer Alexander Gordon Laing, who set off from Tripoli in 1825 to become the first European to reach the fabled city of Timbuktu. He survives a vicious attack by a group of Tuareg and a yellow fever epidemic to reach his destination, writes back to his command of finding abundant records there, and then disappears from history. The "manuscripts of Timbuktu," English notes, were thought to have been destroyed in 2012 by rebels who trashed Timbuktu's monuments. English writes vividly of explorations of the past and complications of the present, with a focus on the Indiana Jones-style account of the evacuation of the manuscripts, spearheaded by a courageous librarian named Abdel Kader Haidara. (Credit: Riverhead)

《衛(wèi)報》國際新聞前主編查理•英格里希以英國探險家亞歷山大•戈登•萊因一次近乎神秘的探險開始了他的故事。1825年，萊因由的黎波里出發(fā)，他從圖阿雷格人惡意的襲擊和一場黃熱病中幸存下來，到達了目的地，成為第一個到達傳說中的城市——廷巴克圖的歐洲人。他寫信給指揮站說發(fā)現(xiàn)了大量記錄，然后他就從歷史中消失了。人們認為，在2012年反政府武裝摧毀廷巴克圖時，這本“廷巴克圖手稿”就已經(jīng)被他們損毀。英格里希生動地描寫了對歷史的探索和混亂的現(xiàn)實。他以印第安納瓊斯式的風(fēng)格著重講述了勇敢的圖書館管理員Abdel Kader Haidara牽頭撤離手稿的行動。(來源：河源出版社)

Agnete Friis, What My Body Remembers

阿格奈泰•斐瑞斯《我的身體記住的》

The first solo novel by Friis, translated from the Danish by Lindy Falk van Rooyen, measures up to the best-selling Nordic noir novel The Boy in the Suitcase she co-authored with Lene Kaaberbøl. Ella Nygaard, 27, is a flawed, memorable character. She has been a ward of the Danish foster care system since she was seven years old. "My father had blown my mother's brains out," she explains. Troubled by post-traumatic stress disorder, which she tries to fight off with drugs and drink, Ella faces having her own son Alex raised in foster care. She fights back, taking Alex to the coastal community in northern Denmark where her own family was destroyed by violence. Under continual scrutiny by neighbours and befriended by strangers who seem eerily familiar, she experiences a series of revelations that grow ever more threatening. (Credit: Soho Crime)

《我的身體記住的》是阿格奈泰•斐瑞斯第一部獨自創(chuàng)作的小說，由林迪•福爾克•范•羅延翻譯自丹麥語。該書與北歐暢銷黑色小說《箱子里的男孩》水平相當。《箱子里的男孩》是她與Lene Kaaberbøl合著的小說。27歲的艾拉•尼高是一個身存缺陷，讓人難忘的角色。艾拉從7歲開始就受到丹麥寄養(yǎng)機構(gòu)的監(jiān)護。她說原因是“我的父親打爆了我母親的腦袋。”艾拉深受創(chuàng)傷后精神失調(diào)的困擾，試圖通過毒品和酒精來抗爭。艾拉面臨的是讓兒子埃里克斯在看護機構(gòu)長大。她開始反抗，將埃里克斯帶到丹麥北部的沿海社區(qū)。那里就是她的家庭被暴力摧毀的地方。在鄰居持續(xù)不斷的密切關(guān)注和帶著詭異熟悉感的陌生人的友善對待下，艾拉發(fā)現(xiàn)了一系列越來越危險的真相。(來源：Soho Crime)