喵星人專屬音樂 十月全球首發大綱
The year’s best books, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review.
年度最佳書籍，由《紐約時報》書評版編輯評選。
Fiction
虛構類
THE ASSOCIATION OF SMALL BOMBS
《小炸彈聯盟》(The Association of Small Bombs)
By Karan Mahajan
卡蘭•馬哈詹(Karan Mahajan)著
Viking. $26.
維京出版社(Viking)，26美元。
A finalist for the National Book Award, Mahajan’s novel — smart, devastating and unpredictable — opens with a Kashmirian terrorist attack in a Delhi market, then follows the lives of those affected. This includes Deepa and Vikas Khurana, whose young sons were killed, and the boys’ injured friend Mansoor, who grows up to flirt with a form of political terrorism himself. As the narrative suggests, nothing recovers from a bomb: not our humanity, not our politics, not even our faith.
馬哈詹的這部機智、非凡、出人意料的小說入圍了國家圖書獎(National Book Award)。小說開篇描寫了德里一處市場發生了一起由克什米爾人制造的恐怖襲擊，接着記述了受這場襲擊影響的人的生活。其中包括在襲擊中失去年幼的兒子的迪帕和維卡斯•庫拉納(Deepa and Vikas Khurana)夫婦，以及兒子的朋友、在襲擊中受傷的曼蘇爾(Mansoor)。後來，曼蘇爾自己慢慢有了一種政治恐怖主義的想法。正如故事所表明的那樣，炸彈襲擊過後，一切都回不來了：我們的人性、政治乃至信仰。
The North Water
《北方海域》(The North Water)
By Ian McGuire
伊恩•麥圭爾(Ian McGuire)著
Henry Holt & Company. $27.
亨利•霍爾特出版公司(Henry Holt & Company)，27美元。
Propelled by a vision that is savage, brutal and relentless, McGuire relates the tale of an opium-addicted 19th-century Irish surgeon who encounters a vicious psychopath on board an Arctic-bound whaling ship. With grim, jagged lyricism, McGuire describes violence with unsparing color and even relish while suggesting a path forward for historical fiction. Picture a meeting between Joseph Conrad and Cormac McCarthy in some run-down port as they offer each other a long, sour nod of recognition.
在一種野蠻、殘酷、無情的意象推動下，麥圭爾講述了19世紀一名有鴉片癮的愛爾蘭外科醫生的故事。在一艘駛向北極的捕鯨船上，這名醫生偶遇了一個惡性精神病態者。麥圭爾用冷峻而錯落的抒情風格描繪了色彩豐富甚至有饒有趣味的暴力，同時又暗示了一條通往歷史小說的道路。想象約瑟夫•康拉德(Joseph Conrad)和科馬克•麥卡錫(Cormac McCarthy)在某個破敗的港口相遇，並不友善地向對方慢慢點頭致意的情景。
THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
《地下鐵路》(The Underground Railroad)
By Colson Whitehead
科爾森•懷特黑德(Colson Whitehead)著
Doubleday. $26.95.
道布爾戴出版社(Doubleday)，26.95美元。
With a conceit as simple as it is bold, Whitehead’s brave, necessary novel imagines a slave fleeing north on a literal underground railroad — complete with locomotives, boxcars and conductors. By small shifts in perspective, the novel (winner of the National Book Award in fiction) ventures to new places in the narrative of slavery, or rather to places where it actually has something new to say: about America’s foundational sins, and the ways black history is too often stolen by white narrators.
憑藉一個既單純又大膽的形象，懷特黑德想象出了一個奴隸藉助地下鐵路逃往北方的故事。鐵路上還有火車頭、火車車廂和列車長。通過微小的視角轉換，小說（國家圖書獎虛構類獲獎作品）進入了以奴隸制爲題材的敘事新領域，或者說真正值得說的新領域：美國的創始原罪，以及黑人的歷史經常被白人講述者盜取的多種方式。
The Vegetarian
《素食者》(The Vegetarian)
By Han Kang
韓江(Han Kang)著
Translated by Deborah Smith
黛博拉•史密斯(Deborah Smith)譯
Hogarth. $21.
霍加斯出版社(Hogarth)，21美元。
In Han’s unsettling novel, a seemingly ordinary housewife — described by her husband as “completely unremarkable in every way” — becomes a vegetarian after a terrifying dream. Han’s treatments of submission and subversion find form in the parable, as the housewife’s self-abnegation turns increasingly severe and surreal. This spare and elegant translation renders the original Korean in pointed and vivid English, preserving Han’s penetrating exploration of whether true innocence is possible in a vicious and bloody world.
韓江這部小說令人不安。故事中，一個看似普通的家庭主婦——丈夫說她“各方面都非常普通”——在做了一個可怕的夢後成了一名素食者。在這名家庭主婦的自我剋制變得越來越嚴重和超現實的過程中，韓江用寓言故事的形式來對順從和顛覆進行了探討。簡潔、優雅的翻譯把最初的韓語變成了犀利、生動的英語，保持了韓江對在一個兇殘、血腥的世界裏是否有可能存在真正的清白的敏銳探索。
WAR AND TURPENTINE
《戰爭與松脂》(War And Turpentine)
By Stefan Hertmans
斯特凡•赫特曼斯(Stefan Hertmans)著
Translated by David McKay
戴維•麥凱(David McKay)譯
Pantheon Books. $26.95.
衆神圖書(Pantheon Books)，26.95美元。
Inspired by the notebooks and reminiscences of his grandfather, a painter who served in the Belgian Army in World War I, Hertmans writes with an eloquence reminiscent of W.G. Sebald as he explores the places where narrative authority, invention and speculation flow together. Weaving his grandfather’s stories into accounts of his own visits to sites that shaped the old man’s development as a husband and father as well as an artist, Hertmans has produced a masterly book about memory, art, love and war.
作者赫特曼斯的祖父是一名畫家，一戰期間曾在比利時陸軍中服役。受祖父的筆記本和往事的鼓舞，赫特曼斯對權威敘事、虛構和猜測相結合進行了探索，行文生動流暢，讓人想起了W.G.塞巴爾德(W.G. Sebald)。赫特曼斯走訪了影響他祖父作爲一個丈夫、父親和藝術家的發展的地方，並將老人的故事穿插在對這些走訪的描述中。這是一部關於回憶、藝術、愛和戰爭的鉅作。
Nonfiction
非虛構
AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAFé: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails
《在存在主義咖啡館裏：自由、存在與杏子雞尾酒》(At The Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails)
By Sarah Bakewell
薩拉•貝克維爾(Sarah Bakewell)著
Other Press. $25.
他者出版社(Other Press)，25美元。
The author of the Montaigne biography “How to Live” has written another impressively lucid book, one that offers a joint portrait of the giants of existentialism and phenomenology: Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Jaspers, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and a half-dozen other European writers and philosophers. Around the early 1930s, the story divides between the characters who eventually come out more or less right, like Beauvoir, and the ones who come out wrong, like Heidegger. Some of Bakewell’s most exciting pages present engaged accounts of complex philosophies, even ones that finally repel her. And the biographical nuggets are irresistible; we learn, for example, that for months after trying mescaline, Sartre thought he was being followed by “lobster-like beings.”
蒙田的傳記《如何生活》(How to Live)的作者又創作出了一部極其簡明易懂的作品。本書如同一幅肖像畫，存在主義和現象學泰斗齊齊現身：薩特、波伏娃、加繆、雅斯佩斯、梅洛-龐蒂、海德格爾和其他多位歐洲作家及哲學家。30年代初期前後，故事被分成了兩個陣營，波伏娃等最終證明或多或少正確的人，以及海德格爾等證明錯了的人。在最令人興奮的一些章節中，貝克維爾熱情投入地記述了一些複雜的哲學思想，甚至是那些最後讓她感到反感的思想。此外，傳記性的事實極具吸引力。比如，我們從本書中得知，在試用了墨斯卡靈後的數月裏，薩特認爲有“像龍蝦一樣的生物”在跟蹤他。
DARK MONEY: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
《暗錢：激進右翼崛起背後的億萬富翁隱祕史》(Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
By Jane Mayer
簡•梅耶爾(Jane Mayer)著
Doubleday. $29.95.
道布爾戴出版社(Doubleday)，29.95美元。
In 1980 Charles and David Koch decided they would spend vast amounts of their fortune to elect conservatives to all levels of government, and the world of American politics has never been the same. Mayer spent five years looking into the Koch brothers’ activities, and the result is this thoroughly investigated, well-documented book. It cannot have been easy to uncover the workings of so secretive an operation, but Mayer has come as close to doing it as anyone is likely to anytime soon.
1980年，查爾斯和戴維•科克(Charles and David Koch)兄弟決定把自己的大量財富用來幫助保守派當選，進入各級政府。現在的美國政界大不一樣了。梅耶爾用了五年時間研究科克兄弟的活動，這部調查充分、記錄完整的著作，便是研究結果。行動非常隱祕，要發現它的運作絕非易事，但梅耶爾的成果在今後相當長一段時間裏很難被超越。
EVICTED: Poverty and Profit in the American City
《被驅逐者：美國城市中的貧窮與利益》(Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
By Matthew Desmond
馬修•德斯蒙德(Matthew Desmond)著
Crown Publishers. $28.
皇冠出版(Crown Publishers)，28美元。
In May 2008, Desmond moved into a Milwaukee trailer park and then to a rooming house on the poverty-stricken North Side. A graduate student in sociology at the time, he diligently took notes on the lives of people on the brink of eviction: those who pay 70 to 80 percent of their incomes in rent, often for homes that are, objectively speaking, unfit for human habitation. Desmond’s empathetic and scrupulously researched book reintroduces the concept of “exploitation” into the poverty debate, showing how eviction, like incarceration, can brand a person for life.
2008年5月，德斯蒙德搬進密爾沃基一個活動房車停車場，後來又住進了極其貧困的北城的一處出租屋。當時還是社會學專業研究生的他勤奮地用筆記的方式，記錄瀕臨被驅逐的人們的生活：他們的房租佔收入的百分之七十到八十，但租來的房屋客觀地說根本不適合人類居住。經過嚴謹的研究後寫成的這部著作體現了德斯蒙德對這個人羣的同情，並再次將“剝削”這個概念引入了有關貧窮的討論中，呈現了驅逐如何會像關押一樣，給一個人的生活打上烙印。
IN THE DARKROOM
《在暗室中》(In The Darkroom)
By Susan Faludi
蘇珊•福盧迪(Susan Faludi)著
Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $32.
大都會圖書(Metropolitan Books)/亨利•霍爾特出版公司，32美元。
When Faludi learned that her estranged and elderly father had undergone gender reassignment surgery, in 2004, it marked the resumption of a difficult relationship. Her father was violent and full of contradictions: a Hungarian Holocaust survivor and Leni Riefenstahl fanatic, he stabbed a man her mother was seeing and used the incident to avoid paying alimony. In this rich, arresting and ultimately generous memoir, Faludi — long known for her feminist journalism — tries to reconcile Steven, the overbearing patriarch her father once was, with Stefánie, the old woman she became.
2004年，當福盧迪得知與自己關係疏遠的老父親做過變性手術時，一段緊張的關係開始恢復。她的父親舉止暴力並且充滿矛盾：身爲匈牙利大屠殺的倖存者卻癡迷萊尼•李芬斯塔爾(Leni Riefenstahl)，還用刀刺傷她母親正在交往的一名男子，並以此事爲由拒絕支付贍養費。在這本豐富、搶眼，最終體現出寬容的回憶錄中，長期以女權主義新聞報道聲名遠揚的福盧迪試圖讓史蒂文(Steven)和斯蒂芬妮(Stefánie)和解。前者是作爲曾經的專橫家長的父親，後者則是老去後的作者自己。
THE RETURN: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between
《歸去：父親、兒子和他們的土地》(The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between)
By Hisham Matar
希沙姆•馬塔爾(Hisham Matar)著
Random House. $26.
蘭登書屋(Random House)，26美元。
Matar’s father, Jaballa Matar — a prominent critic of Muammar el-Qaddafi’s dictatorship — was abducted in exile, in 1990, and turned over to the Libyan regime. Whether Jaballa was among those killed in a prison massacre six years later is impossible to know; he simply disappeared. Hisham Matar returned to Libya in the spring of 2012, in the brief honeymoon after Qaddafi had been overthrown and before the current civil war, and his extraordinary memoir of that time is so much more besides: a reflection on the consolations of art, an analysis of authoritarianism, and an impassioned work of mourning.
馬塔爾的父親賈巴拉•馬塔爾(Jaballa Matar)是穆阿邁爾•卡扎菲上校(Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi)領導的獨裁政府的著名批評者。1990年，流亡在外的他遭遇綁架，並被移交給利比亞政府。賈巴拉是否在六年後的一起監獄大屠殺中遇難無從得知，他完全消失了。2012年春天，希沙姆•馬塔爾回到利比亞，度過了一個短暫的蜜月。那時，卡扎菲已被推翻，當前這場內戰尚未爆發。這部非凡的回憶錄是對那個時期的再現，同時又遠不僅限於此，它還有着對藝術帶來的慰藉的深思、對威權主義的分析和慷慨激昂的哀悼。
