BBC推薦：3月必讀書單

春暖花開的時節，最適合讀書了。我們跟隨BBC文化頻道的推薦，爲大家編譯了3月份不容錯過的十本好書。選擇一本，帶到花叢中，讀起來吧！

Dan Chaon, Ill Will
丹‧查恩《怨念》

Dustin, a Cleveland psychologist in his 40s, is still damaged by the monstrous murder of his parents, aunt and uncle when he was 13. He testified against his older foster brother Rusty, who was sentenced to life in prison. Dustin’s wife is dying from ovarian cancer, and he can barely connect with his teenage sons. His professional distance is challenged by Aqil, a new client, a former policeman obsessed with a string of drownings of drunken young men. And he learns that new DNA evidence has freed Rusty. As Aqil draws Dustin into an amateur investigation, Rusty reaches out to Dustin’s troubled son Aaron. Imagine the shower scene in Psycho, extended across 11 sections and three decades, with multiple unsolved mysteries. That’s the level of intensity Chaon achieves in this dark, provocative thriller.
達斯汀是美國克里夫蘭州一位40多歲的心理學家。他13歲時，父母、叔叔和嬸嬸都被人殘忍殺害，這件事給他造成陰影到現在都沒散去。他曾經作證指控自家收養的兄弟羅斯緹是兇手，後者被判處終身監禁。達斯汀的妻子患卵巢癌，將不久於人世，而他與自己十幾歲的兒子們關係又很疏離。他一貫保持的專業距離被一位新客戶阿基爾打破了。阿基爾以前是警察，一直沉迷於追蹤一系列醉酒青年溺亡案件。達斯汀還得知，因爲有了新的DNA證據，羅斯緹已經被釋放了。阿基爾帶着達斯汀展開業餘調查的時候，羅斯緹開始接近達斯汀的兒子艾倫。想象一下電影《驚魂記》裏的那個謀殺場景，橫跨了三十年，延續了11部作品，引出多個未解之謎。查恩在這本充滿黑暗又讓人慾罷不能的驚悚小說中描繪的就是如《驚魂記》那樣的緊張氛圍。

Hannah Tinti, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
漢娜•亭蒂《塞繆爾•霍利的十二種生活》

Loo’s mother Lily is dead, her devoted father Samuel is a mystery she deciphers through the dozen bullet wounds on his body – he, remarkably is alive – and his personal mementoes. At the age of 12 he teaches her how to shoot a gun. Shortly after, he moves her to her mother’s hometown, a Massachusetts fishing village. There they subsist mostly on his catch and Loo deals with being an outsider at school. Over the years Loo questions her mother’s death by drowning and discovers elements of her father’s criminal past. Tinti spells it out in chapters based on each of the bullets that pierced his body (Bullet Number Three on Whidbey Island; Number Six in Alaska within view of the glacier where icebergs are born).
盧的媽媽莉莉去世了，一直深愛她的父親塞繆爾還健在，但他一直是個謎。盧通過父親身上的十幾處槍傷和他的一些個人收藏物品試圖解開這個謎團。在盧12歲的時候，父親就教她打槍。之後不久，父親就把她帶到了她母親的家鄉，馬薩諸塞州的一個小漁村。在那裏，他們主要靠父親打漁爲生，盧在學校裏一直是個局外人。多年以來，盧一直對母親溺亡一事存疑，還發現了一些父親過往犯罪行爲的蛛絲馬跡。亭蒂依照盧的父親身體裏子彈的順序展開整個故事（比如：第三顆子彈，惠德比島；第六顆子彈，能看見冰川的阿拉斯加）。

Domenico Starnone, Ties
多米尼科•斯塔諾內《牽絆》

Novelist Jhumpa Lahiri’s first published translation of an Italian text is the 11th novel from the Strega-award winning Neapolitan writer Starnone. It’s a story of family ties disrupted, and of the echoes of marital distress played out over many decades, into the next generation. Starnone toggles between past and present, giving equal time to the voices of Vanda and her husband Aldo, and adding the perspectives of their son Sandro and daughter Anna. He frames his tale with a mysterious home invasion. Each detail resonates, from the name of the family cat to the idiosyncratic way in which Aldo ties his shoes to his cherished Polaroids. Distinguished by its distinctive characters and clarity of tone, Ties is a gem.
小說家裘帕•拉希莉出版的第一本源自意大利語的譯作是史特雷加文學獎獲得者、來自意大利那不勒斯的斯塔諾內的第11本小說。這是一個關於破裂的家庭關係，以及婚姻困擾持續幾十年，以致影響到下一代的故事。斯塔諾內的敘述在過去和現在之間不斷切換，給予莞達和她的丈夫阿爾多相當的篇幅來展現各自的視角，後來還加入了他們的兒子桑德羅和女兒安娜的視角。他以一起奇怪的入室案件搭起整個故事的框架。書中的每個細節都有深意，從他們家貓的名字，到阿爾多繫鞋帶的怪異方式，以及他愛不釋手的拍立得相機。每個角色都特點鮮明，節奏明晰。《牽絆》確是一部佳作。

Meg Howrey, The Wanderers
梅格‧荷瑞《漫遊者》

Howrey’s new novel was inspired by a 2011 news report on Mars500, a 520-day simulation of a space trip to Mars with a six-member crew from Russia, China and Europe. She gives equal time to Yoshi, Sergei and Helen, a crew of three astronauts from Japan, Russia and the US, who hope to be chosen for the Mars mission sponsored by a private company. As they endure a 17-month simulation, each must prove to have the stamina, sanity and discipline to withstand the enforced isolation and the series of calculated failures created by the “sim” team. The key question for each: “Does it feel real?”
荷瑞的這部新作靈感來源於2011年一篇有關“火星500”項目的新聞報道。該項目是一個爲期520天的模擬火星考察項目，由來自俄羅斯、中國和歐洲的六名宇航員參與。她的小說中有三位主人公，來自日本的Yoshi，俄羅斯的Sergei以及美國的Helen。他們三人都希望能被選中參加這個由私人公司贊助的火星項目。他們要經歷17個月的模擬訓練，每個人都必須證明自己有毅力、足夠的理性以及自律經受強制隔離的環境以及模擬團隊設置的一系列故障。每個人面臨的一個最重要的問題是：“跟真實場景感覺一樣嗎？”

Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot
道格拉斯•庫普蘭《數據退化》

Canadian writer, designer and artist Coupland names his new collection of stories and essays for a digital archiving term describing how files can spontaneously decompose. With characteristic wit, he extends that term to describe “the way my brain has been feeling since 2000, as I shed older and weaker neurons and connections and create and enhance new and unexpected ones.” Bit Rot offers priceless insights. Few people are better at explaining the ramifications of the digital era.
加拿大作家、設計師及藝術家庫普蘭用一個數字存檔專業術語給自己最新的故事散文集命名。這個bit rot指存檔的文件會自行分解消融。他用自己獨有的智慧將這一概念進行了擴展，將其用來描述“自2000年以來我大腦的感覺，我拋棄老舊、疲弱的神經元及其聯繫，建立並加強了新的以及意外發現的神經關聯。” 《數據退化》一書提供的深入見解非常寶貴。沒幾個人能比他更善於解讀數字時代產生的影響。

Jami Attenberg, All Grown Up
潔米・艾廷博格《長大成人》

Andrea Bern is turning 40 soon. She’s an independent woman: “I’m alone. I’m a drinker. I’m a former artist. I’m a shrieker in bed.” Still, despite eight years in therapy, she’s questioning what it means to be an adult. She left art school in Chicago to come back to New York (“Spiritually, it’s a reverse commute”). She left her art career for a full-time job, chose not to marry or have a child. She’s paid off her student loans, and furnished an apartment. Attenberg captures the kaleidoscopic flow of Andrea’s life in spare and witty vignettes that build to a surprising and moving conclusion.
安德莉亞・伯恩馬上就40歲了。她是位獨立女性：“我獨自一人，我愛喝酒，我以前是個藝術家，我牀事的時候會尖叫。”可是，雖然經過了八年的治療，她依然不明白作爲一個成年人意味着什麼。她離開芝加哥的藝術學校，回到紐約（“從精神上來說，這是一次倒退”）。她放棄藝術事業，選擇了一份全職的工作，她選擇不結婚、不生孩子。她還清了學生貸款，精心佈置了自己的房間。艾廷博格用一些精巧佈局的小花絮捕捉到了安德莉亞生活中的一些片段，而這些花絮最終構成了一個令人意外又感人的結局。

Paul La Farge, The Night Ocean
保羅・拉・法基《夜之海》

The bizarre and the scandalous float through this novel, an alternate history that speculates about the connection between seminal American horror writer HP Lovecraft and a gay fan named Robert Barlow. The two lived together for several months in 1934, when Lovecraft was 43 and Barlow was 16. They collaborated on a story called The Night Ocean before Lovecraft died in 1937. La Farge constructs a story within a story filled with artifice – a faux document (the Erotonimicon, a supposed Lovecraft diary), false identities and faked suicides. Psychiatrist Marina Willett watches as her husband Charlie becomes obsessed with Lovecraft and believes he has found Barlow alive and living in Canada. Then Charlie disappears. This many-layered literary mystery is chockablock with surprise appearances – William Burroughs, Ursula Le Guin, Diego Rivera, Roy Cohn, to name a few.
這本小說由怪異事件和醜聞貫穿始終。其實，這個故事是對知名的美國恐怖小說作家HP・洛夫克萊夫特和一個同性戀粉絲羅伯特・巴羅之間隱祕關係猜測的另類改編。1934年，43歲的洛夫克萊夫和16歲的巴羅一起住了幾個月。他們在1937年，洛夫克萊夫特去世之前，合作完成了一個名爲《夜之海》的故事。拉・法基很巧妙地在一個故事裏構建了另一個故事——一份假檔案（據稱是洛夫克萊夫的日記）、假身份以及假自殺案。瑪麗娜・威力特眼看着丈夫查理癡迷於洛夫克萊夫，他認爲他已經找到了生活在加拿大的巴羅。然後，查理就失蹤了。這部故事層次豐富的神祕作品裏面還有不少名作家意外現身，其中包括：威廉・伯羅斯、厄休拉•勒奎恩、迭戈•里維拉以及羅依•康等。

Helene Cooper, Madame President
海倫•庫伯《女總統》

Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Cooper, who was born in Liberia, traces the rise of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first democratically elected female president in Africa and a 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Sirleaf was born in 1938, educated in Monrovia and the US (including a master’s degree at Harvard), and served as finance minister. Jailed by the military dictator Samuel Doe, she went into exile. In the 2005 presidential elections, Sirleaf generated a huge voting bloc of Liberian women, leading her to victory. Cooper’s incisive portrait is undergirded by her reporting on the country’s internal power struggles and years of dictatorial rule, Doe’s bloody military coup and civil war sparked by the notoriously brutal Charles Taylor. She also details the challenges Sirleaf met, including a $4.7 billion debt and the Ebola virus.
曾經獲得普利策獎的美國記者庫伯出生於利比里亞，她在本書中追蹤記錄了非洲首位民選女總統及2011年諾貝爾和平獎獲得者埃倫•約翰遜•瑟利夫的成功之路。瑟利夫出生於1938年，曾在蒙羅維亞和美國接受教育（在哈佛大學獲得碩士學位），擔任過利比里亞財政部長。被軍事獨裁者塞繆爾•杜伊監禁之後，瑟利夫開始流亡生涯。在2005年的總統選舉中，瑟利夫獲得了大量女性選民的支持，並最終獲勝。庫伯對於利比里亞國內的政權爭鬥、多年獨裁統治、杜伊的血腥軍事政變以及由兇殘的查爾斯•泰勒引發的內戰的報道爲她的深入描寫提供了堅實的基礎。她同時還詳細描寫了瑟利夫面臨的各種挑戰，其中包括47億美元的債務和埃博拉病毒。

Mathias Enard, Compass
馬蒂亞斯•埃納爾《羅盤》

Compass chronicles one long night of memory, opium, illness and insomnia spent by Franz Ritter, a musicologist with an interest in Iranian music. Franz is entranced with the intersection of East and West, and with Sarah, a copper-haired academic with a fiery intellect. Now Sarah has written him from Sarawak, bringing up recollections, including their intimate overnight in Palmyra, academic conferences in Tehran, a voyage to Beirut with Nadim, the Iranian musician she marries. Haunted by unrequited love, Franz meditates on his treasured compass, once owned by Beethoven, which always points east. Compass, which won France’s Priz Goncourt, is poetic, ironic, irresistible.
《羅盤》記述的是對伊朗音樂頗有興趣的音樂學者弗朗茲•瑞德在回憶、鴉片、疾病和失眠中度過的一個漫漫長夜。弗朗茲癡迷於東西方的交融，他還對一位棕色頭髮、學術觀點犀利的女孩莎拉着了迷。他收到了莎拉從沙撈越給他寫來的信，引發了諸多回憶：他們在巴爾米拉共度的良宵，在德黑蘭參加的學術會議，和莎拉的丈夫、伊朗音樂家納迪姆一起乘船去貝魯特。因爲被這段單相思困擾，弗朗茲拿着他的寶貝羅盤陷入沉思。這個羅盤總是指向東方，貝多芬曾經是這個羅盤的主人。《羅盤》曾獲得法國龔古爾獎，是一本富有詩意、充滿諷刺，讓人難以抵抗的作品。

Elif Batuman, The Idiot
艾麗芙•巴特曼《白癡》

Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives at Harvard in 1995 – at the dawn of email – ready to take on all intellectual challenges that come her way. She makes friends with Svetlana, a Serbian classmate, and becomes close with Ivan, a Hungarian upperclassman. Thanks to Ivan, she spends the summer after her freshman year in Europe, with a job teaching English in Hungarian villages. Seline is open-minded and adventurous (“I got on a random tram to see where it went,” she notes during a visit to Budapest). Batuman’s sardonic wit makes for a delectable unfolding of Selin’s experience of love, life and language.
賽琳是一位土耳其移民的女兒，她在1995年，電子郵件剛誕生的時候，來到哈佛大學，準備迎接學業上的各種挑戰。她跟班裏來自塞爾維亞的同學Svetlana成爲了朋友，跟一位匈牙利上層男士Ivan關係變得親密。因爲Ivan的關係，賽琳在大一之後的那個暑假去了歐洲，在一個匈牙利村子裏教英語。賽琳思想開放又很有冒險精神（她在記錄一次布達佩斯之旅時寫道：“我隨便坐上了一輛電車，就想看看它往哪兒開”）。巴特曼的冷幽默智慧讓賽琳的愛情、生活以及語言經歷以一種令人愉悅的方式展開。