BBC推薦：五月必讀書單

BBC五月必讀書單新鮮出爐。從《衛報》前國際新聞主編查理•英格里希執筆的《傳奇的城市》，到特蕾西•雪佛蘭的現代版《奧賽羅》，這10部佳作你最想讀哪本？

Lisa Ko, The Leavers
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。在那裏，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矩：要麼立刻還錢，要麼永遠消失）。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，但是他無法忘記自己的母親，他渴望知道發生了什麼。柯通過細膩敏銳的細節描寫探索了移民問題的混亂和美國一代移民的複雜性。

César Aira, The Little Buddhist Monk & The Proof
塞薩爾•艾拉《小和尚》和《證據》

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》由尼克•凱斯特翻譯，這兩本風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於“文化空間”的法國攝影師和他的妻子。他提議做嚮導帶他們去佛教寺廟。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裏。在《證據》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。艾拉已經入圍布克國際文學獎

Benjamin Taylor, The Hue and Cry at Our House
本傑明•泰勒 《我們家的嘈雜聲》

One morning Taylor, then a sixth grader in his hometown of Fort Worth, Texas has the honour of shaking the hand of the President of the United States, an "Apollo" with "copper-coloured hair and blue eyes". A man who is obviously "indestructible". That afternoon the teacher announces that a great man had died in Dallas today. "The fresh knowledge that followed… was a discovery of history not as what happened in the past but as the current we rode," Taylor recalls. The year that John F Kennedy was assassinated is the year in which Taylor, who describes himself as "a repellently good boy like most of my kind, Jewish and going-to-be homosexual", is "yanked from the random floating mental life of childhood and propelled into youth." His account is a precise and eloquent coming-of-age. (Credit: Penguin)
一天早晨，在家鄉德克薩斯的沃斯堡，當時上六年級的泰勒有幸和“褐發藍眸、外形俊美的”美國總統握手。這是一個看起來“堅不可摧”的美男子。那天下午，老師宣佈，一位偉人於當日在達拉斯逝世。泰勒回憶道：“這個新知識點揭示的歷史不是過去發生的事情，而是當時我們正經歷的。”泰勒稱，“自己和大多數猶太人一樣是一個叛逆的好孩子，有同性戀傾向。” 肯尼迪被暗殺的那一年，他的“精神世界突然從順其自然的童年被迫進入青年。”他描寫了一個真實而生動的關於成長的故事。

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》，小說輕而易舉地製造了緊張感。她將這個關於愛情、嫉妒、種族主義和暴力的故事的背景設在上世紀70年代的華盛頓，那裏也是她的家鄉。奧塞是一個加納外交官的兒子，他在6年內換了4家學校。這一次是一所白人學校，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。伊恩是班級裏最精明最會算計的學生，他發現了迪伊和新來的男生之間的火花，併發誓要毀掉它。在一天放學時，伊恩讓迪伊和奧賽反目，並謀劃了一場令人震驚的暴力事件

Charmaine Craig, Miss Burma
夏爾曼•克雷格《緬甸小姐》

When Louisa takes the stage to compete in the Miss Burma competition in the mid-1950s, it's not immediately evident how complicated her lineage is. Her Jewish father Benny was serving as a British customs officer in 1939 when he first spotted her mother Khim, a member of the Karen ethnic minority persecuted for centuries by the Bamar majority. When the Japanese occupied Burma during World War Two, the couple fled to the east to find shelter with Khim's Karen community. Benny is imprisoned, and Khim does what she must to survive. In 1948, after independence, they both support the Karen leaders in what evolves into a decades-long civil war. Craig draws from her own family history for this riveting account of the treacheries, fractures, and courageous acts of wartime. (Credit: Grove Press)
上世紀50年代中期，當路易莎站在舞臺上競選緬甸小姐時，並沒有馬上發現她的血統有多麼複雜。她的猶太人父親是一名英國海關官員，1939年，父親本尼第一次遇見母親金。金是克倫族人，克倫族受緬甸主體民族緬族的迫害。二戰期間日本佔領緬甸時，這對夫妻和克倫族人逃往緬甸東部尋找避難之地。本尼被囚禁，金不得不想辦法生存。1948年緬甸獨立後，在長達數十年的內戰中，這對夫婦都支持克倫族領導人。克雷格通過描寫自己家族的歷史，生動講述了戰爭時期的背叛、分裂以英勇的故事

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，他是鑽了基督教會的空子才被任命爲天主教神父。在成爲天主教徒前，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，學習成爲神父，並在有妻兒的情況下獲得任免。洛克伍德的回憶錄內容深入而幽默，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，洛克伍德和丈夫傑森“身無分文、精疲力竭”，他們在堪薩斯城的孃家和她古怪的父母住了一年。從少女時代起，她就從記憶中迸發出沉思，直到現在，洛克伍德已被《紐約時報》稱爲“葷段子隱喻女王”。她什麼時候開啓作詩天賦的呢？洛克伍德形容“那種開竅的感覺出現時，兩個單詞會突然自動聯繫在一起，或想要結合，或者一直連在一起，那些語句會自己蹦出來。”

Barbara Gowdy, Little Sister
巴巴拉•高迪《小妹妹》

Gowdy is a magical storyteller. In her latest novel, Rose Bowan, who manages her family's cinema in Toronto, begins to experience out-of-body episodes triggered by thunderstorms. She becomes another person – Harriet Smith – and experiences everything Harriet does through her own body, from sharper eyesight to satisfying sex. Harriet is a real person; Rose tracks her, while her boyfriend Victor, a meteorologist, helps research her possible condition – and forecasts weeks of storms ahead. Fiona, her mother, is falling into dementia – losing herself while Rose is "finding another self". When Harriet begins to resemble her sister Ava, who died in an accident when they were young, Rose is pulled into a vortex of memory. Little Sister is a gem, powered by Gowdy's incredible fabulist imagination. (Credit: Tin House)
高迪是一名神奇的故事敘述者。在她最新的小說《小妹妹》中，羅絲•柏萬在多倫多管理家族的電影院，她開始因爲雷雨天氣而出現靈魂出竅的經歷。她成爲另一個人——哈麗特•史密斯，從更加清晰的視力到性滿足，羅絲在哈麗特的身體裏體驗了她所做的一切。哈麗特是真實存在的人；羅絲開始追蹤哈麗特，而她的男朋友——氣象學家維克多幫她研究可能出現這種情況的原因，並提前數週預測暴風雨天氣。在羅絲“尋找另一個自我”時，她的母親菲奧娜得了老年癡呆，正在“喪失自我”。哈麗特的妹妹小時候死於一場意外，當哈麗特長得開始像妹妹時，羅絲被捲入一場記憶的漩渦。高迪預言家般驚人的想象力讓《小妹妹》成爲一部佳作

Antonio Di Benedetto, Nest in the Bones
安東尼奧•迪•班內德託《以骨爲巢》

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託•波拉尼奧的首部英文作品。他被譽爲“最偉大的拉丁美洲作家之一”。該書由瑪蒂娜•布羅內爾翻譯，包含波拉尼奧早年在阿根廷的作品，在“骯髒戰爭”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。而它們卻被一羣“莫名貪婪的”禿鷹取而代之。他寫道：“禿鷹殘忍地傷害他，傷害到骨子裏。”在其他故事中，一個被囚禁的男人夢到警衛不讓他休息，一個流放歸來的男人感覺他在祖國就是個陌生人。迪•班內德託巧妙地提及博格斯，他和皮蘭德婁、陀斯妥也夫斯基對他有早期影響

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•萊因一次近乎神祕的探險開始了他的故事。1825年，萊因由的黎波里出發，他從圖阿雷格人惡意的襲擊和一場黃熱病中倖存下來，到達了目的地，成爲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現了大量記錄，然後他就從歷史中消失了。人們認爲，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實。他以印第安納瓊斯式的風格着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

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作的小說，由林迪•福爾克•範•羅延翻譯自丹麥語。該書與北歐暢銷黑色小說《箱子裏的男孩》水平相當。《箱子裏的男孩》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機構的監護。她說原因是“我的父親打爆了我母親的腦袋。”艾拉深受創傷後精神失調的困擾，試圖通過毒品和酒精來抗爭。艾拉麪臨的是讓兒子埃裏克斯在看護機構長大。她開始反抗，將埃裏克斯帶到丹麥北部的沿海社區。那裏就是她的家庭被暴力摧毀的地方。在鄰居持續不斷的密切關注和帶着詭異熟悉感的陌生人的友善對待下，艾拉發現了一系列越來越危險的真相