BBC推荐：4月必读书单

我们跟随BBC文化频道的推荐，为大家编译了4月份不容错过的十本好书。从超现实主义短篇小说到对全球十二棵树的观察记录，本月你该把这些书放到你的书架上了。

Michel Stone, Border Child
迈克尔•斯通 《边境小孩》

In Stone's first novel, The Iguana Tree, Héctor makes the risky border crossing from Mexico into the US and finds a good job in South Carolina. When his wife Lilia follows him, she is separated from their infant daughter Alejandra. Border Child begins several years later, back in their home village in Oaxaca, where both of them mourn their Alejandra, fearing she is dead. Then comes a message that they might be able to find her. As Lilia prepares for the birth of their third child, haunted by the consequences of her actions, Héctor sets off on a search that leads to a possibility neither had considered. Stone makes palpable the vulnerabilities and exploitation of Lilia and Héctor, hard-working parents seeking a better future for their family. (Credit: Doubleday)
在斯通的第一部小说《鬣蜥树》中，赫克托从墨西哥冒险跨越边境来到美国，之后在南卡罗来纳州谋得一份好工作。赫克托的妻子莉莉娅在跟随他时，被迫和他们年幼的孩子阿莱杭德娜分开。几年后，当赫克托和妻子回到他们在瓦哈卡的家乡，为可能已经死去的孩子阿莱杭德娜悲伤时，《边境小孩》的故事由此展开。这时，有消息传来说他们或许能找到阿莱杭德娜。在莉莉娅准备生育第三个孩子时，赫克托对妻子怀孕带来的后续影响很是苦恼，于是他动身去探寻阿莱杭德娜的下落，由此遇到了以前从未设想过的事情。通过描写莉莉娅和赫克托为了家庭的美好未来而辛苦奋斗的过程，斯通让读者真切感受到了这对父母身处弱势深受剥削的境地。（来源：双日出版社）

David George Haskell, The Songs of Trees
大卫•乔治•哈思克 《树之歌》

Haskell makes repeated visits to a dozen trees around the world. “The forest presses its mouth to every living creature and exhales,” he writes in the Amazonian rainforest in Ecuador, a place of unrivaled plant diversity. There he climbs to the crown of a giant ceiba tree at least 150 years old and traces its connections to plant, animal, bacterial and fungal life. He visits an olive plantation in Jerusalem, and tracks seasons of new growth after a green ash falls on the Cumberland plateau in Kentucky. On New York's Upper West Side he wires a Callery pear planted above the subway, describing how the city's sounds affect the tree's growth (“when a plant is shaken, it grows more roots”). Each acutely observed essay is resonant as a poem.(Credit: Viking)
哈思克多次前往观察分布在世界各地的十二棵树木。厄瓜多尔的植物多样性极其丰富，在这里的亚马逊热带雨林里，他写道“森林里所有的生物都散发出自己的气息”。他还在这里爬上了一棵巨型木棉树的树冠，这棵树至少有150岁树龄。他记录了这棵树与其他动植物、细菌还有真菌的联系。在耶路撒冷，他去参观当地的一家橄榄种植园。在肯塔基州的昆伯兰高原，他记录下一颗洋白蜡树种子扎根后在各个季节的生长情况。在纽约上西区，他将电线绕在一棵长在地铁上方的豆梨树上，以此记录城市的声音对豆梨生长的影响（例如“当树受到摇晃时，它会长出更多的树根”）。每一篇观察敏锐的散文都像诗歌一样朗朗上口。（来源：维京出版社）

Nick Joaquin, The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic
尼克•华奎因 《有两个肚脐的女人和热带哥特故事集》

For the centenary of his birth comes the first US publication of a compilation of work from Filipino writer Nick Joaquin, including his best-known stories and the 1966 play A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino. Joaquin's writing is laced with references to his country's colonial history, Catholicism and pre-Christian rituals. The “two navels” in the title story refer to symbolic ties to Spanish and American colonial periods. (The once-heroic father in the story, who chooses exile in Hong Kong over American occupation, is overcome with despair when he finds his ancestral house in Dinondo destroyed.) May Day Eve and The Summer Solstice dramatise the lure of pagan celebrations (in the latter, Dona Lupe is transformed after joining dancing village women: “her eyes brimmed with moonlight, and her mouth with laughter”). (Credit: Penguin)
在华奎因诞辰一百年的时候，美国第一次出版了菲律宾作家尼克•华奎因的作品集，其中包括一些知名的小说以及1966年出版的剧本《作为菲律宾人的艺术家肖像》。华奎因在写作时会融入自己国家的殖民历史、天主教和基督教诞生以前的礼制仪式。小说书名里的“两个肚脐”象征着西班牙和美国殖民时期的关系。（小说里，曾经十分英勇的父亲，在美军占领家乡之后选择流落到香港，但在发现位于Dinondo的祖屋被摧毁后陷入了绝望。）在五朔节前夕和夏至，异教徒们会举办盛大的庆祝活动。（夏至庆祝活动上，卢皮夫人加入当地妇女的跳舞行列之后发生了变化：“她的眼睛里闪烁着月光的银辉，嘴角也扬起了笑容”）。（来源：企鹅出版社）

Lesley NnekaArimah, What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky
莱斯利•奈卡•亚丽玛 《当人从天而降的时候意味着什么》

From the Nigerian-born, Minneapolis-based Arimah comes a story collection full of dazzlers. Light, in which a father taking care of his 11-year-old daughter in Nigeria while her mother is in the US pursuing her MBA discovers he wants to preserve her “streak of fire”, won the 2015 African Commonwealth Prize. In Who Will Greet You at Home, a National Magazine Award finalist after publication in The New Yorker, an assistant hairdresser creates a yearned-for baby out of hair, only to discover its insatiable appetites. In the dystopian title story, a finalist for the 2016 Caine Prize, a woman who specialises in calculating grief faces the question “What would happen if you couldn't forget, if every emotion from every person whose grief you'd eaten came back up?” (Credit: Riverhead Books)
作者亚丽玛出生于尼日利亚，居住在美国明尼阿波利斯。她写了一本充满光怪陆离元素的故事集，并获得了2015年非洲联邦奖。在故事《光》中，父亲在妻子去美国攻读工商管理学硕士时，独自待在尼日利亚照顾他们11岁的女儿，他发现他想要保护女儿的“火花”。《谁会在家里迎接你》在《纽约客》发表后入围国家杂志奖，书中的一位美发师助理用头发创造出一个自己渴望的婴孩，却发现这个婴孩欲壑难填。在一个入围了2016凯恩文学奖的反乌托邦标题的故事中，一位总是在计算各种悲伤的女人直面这个问题：“如果你无法忘记从每个人表情中吸收的悲伤，那会发生什么？”（来源：河源出版社）

Richard Bausch, Living in the Weather of the World
理查德•鲍什 《生活在世界大环境之下》

These 14 flawless new stories from a master craftsman deal with betrayals, distances and unspoken family conflict. In The Same People, as a couple married for decades prepare to end their lives, the wife says, “I wish we'd had children.” The young Memphis painter in The Lineaments of Gratified Desire finds his engagement disrupted when he is commissioned by a wealthy 83-year-old to paint a nude portrait of his 23-year-old bride-to-be. Two Iraq war veterans drink cognac with a Vietnam vet who owns a Memphis bar; Veterans Night ends in tragedy. As the gloomy narrator of Map-Reading a gay man estranged from his family who is meeting his half sister on a windy, rainy day, puts it, “this was life in the world: getting yourself drenched even with an umbrella.” (Credit: Knopf)
这14篇完美的全新故事出自一位文坛巨匠之手，他善于描写背叛、隔阂以及其他难以言说的家庭矛盾。在《相同的人》一文中，一对已经结婚几十年的夫妇准备结束他们的生命时，妻子说“我们当初要是有个孩子就好了”。而在《心满意足的模样》一文中，来自孟菲斯的年轻画家被一位83岁的富翁指派，要求他给自己23岁的未婚妻画一幅裸体像，二人的婚约因此被扰乱。在《老兵之夜》一文中，两名参加过伊拉克战争的老兵同一名越南老兵一起喝白兰地，这名越南老兵在孟菲斯拥有一家酒吧，故事最后以悲剧收尾。《读地图》一文中，故事的讲述者是一位忧郁的同性恋，被自己的家庭疏远，还在既刮风又下雨的天气里遇见了自己同父异母的姐妹，他说“这就是这个世界上的生活：即使你撑着雨伞，你还是会被淋湿。”（来源：诺夫出版社）

David Owen, Where the Water Goes
大卫•欧文 《水都去哪了》

The New Yorker staff writer Owen examines the origins, scope and current state of the Colorado river in the American West that supplies water to more than 36 million people, irrigates six million acres of farmland, and powers two of the country's largest hydroelectric plants. Over the last century the river's water has been “over-allocated,” Owen writes; this imbalance has been exacerbated by the drought in the West. He brings us to key spots along the river, from the Grand Canyon to Las Vegas, the Imperial Valley, and the Salton Sea. He describes struggles with water shortages, and solutions that may arise in the future, including desalinization, diverting other rivers, and cloud seeding. Where the Water Goes is an eloquent argument for addressing the impact of human inhabitants on the natural world. (Credit: Riverhead Books)
《纽约客》特约撰稿人欧文考察了美国西部科罗拉多河的源头、流域和现状。这条河流为3600多万人提供水源，灌溉600万英亩农田，而且还为美国最大的两座水电站供能。欧文写道，过去一个世纪里，这条河的水资源已经被“过度使用”。美国西部的旱情更是加剧了这一不平衡性。他介绍了沿河的几个主要地点，包括大峡谷、拉斯维加斯、帝王谷以及沙尔顿海。他在书中描述了未来可能会出现的缺水问题及其应对方法，包括淡化海水、其他河流改道以及人工降雨。《水都去哪了》是为解决人类居住者对大自然影响而提出的有力论述。（来源：河源出版社 Riverhead Books）

Martha Cooley, Guesswork
玛莎•库利 《猜测》

Cooley spends a 14-month sabbatical from her life in Brooklyn in the medieval village of Castiglione del Terziere with her Italian husband, Antonio Romani, a fellow writer and translator. There she comes to terms with the deaths of eight dear friends within the past decade. Her mother, nearing 90, is becoming increasingly frail. Her father suffers from dementia. These accumulated losses, she writes "have upended me." Cooley describes her daily life with Antonio, the feral cats and bats and villagers they encounter. She muses on time, mortality and ambition. Midway through her break, she realises she has dwelt more upon endings than on beginnings – a new novel, a new marriage. In these lyrical essays, Cooley brings us along vicariously to feel time loosen its grip, allowing a renewing self to emerge. (Credit: Catapult)
库利从她在布鲁克林的生活中抽身出来，和她的意大利丈夫安东尼奥•罗马尼一起在Castiglione del Terziere（地名）的中世纪村庄里度过了一个长达14个月的假期。她的丈夫也是一名作家兼翻译家。过去十年里，她有八位挚友去世，在那里她开始接受他们的死亡。她的母亲快90岁了，身体越来越虚弱。她的父亲患有痴呆症。她写道，这些不断失去的经历“让我不堪重负”。库利描述了她和安东尼奥的日常生活，他们遇到的野猫、蝙蝠还有村民。她会思索时间、生死和人生抱负的意义。在休假的过程中，她意识到相比于开始一件事，像是一部新小说或者婚姻的开端，她以前更看重结尾。库利的抒情散文让我们产生共鸣，感觉到时间放慢脚步，让自己重获新生。（来源：Catapult）

Leonora Carrington, The Complete Stories
利奥诺拉•卡林顿 《完整故事集》

Carrington, the surrealist painter, was also a writer of strangely dark and unearthly short stories, collected here for the first time (and including three previously unpublished tales) – those in French are translated by Kathrine Talbot, those in Spanish by Anthony Kerrigan. Born in Lancashire on the day the US declared war on Germany, Carrington ran off to France with Max Ernst at 19. When he was interned, she became unhinged and ended up in an asylum, given the pharmaceutical equivalent of shock treatment. Witness to cruelties and terrible disruptions of reality, Carrington wrote stories filled with fluid creatures caught somewhere between animal, vegetable, mineral and human. One narrator sends a hyena in her place to her debutante ball; another visits a nearby house to discover her neighbors are long dead, possibly vampires. Like her paintings, Carrington's stories are hauntingly original. (Credit: Dorothy)
卡林顿是一位超现实主义画家，同时也是一名从事奇异黑暗和灵异短篇小说写作的作家。本书首次集合了这些短篇小说，其中包括三篇以前从未发表的故事。该书法语版由卡特琳•塔尔博特翻译，西班牙语版由安东尼•凯里根翻译。美国对德宣战的那一天，卡林顿出生在兰开夏郡。19岁时，卡林顿和马克斯•恩斯特一起逃往法国。马克斯被关押后，卡林顿精神错乱，最终被送到精神病院接受相当于休克治疗的药物治疗。由于亲身见证了现实的残酷和混乱，卡林顿笔下的故事充满了多变的角色，他们介于动物、植物、矿物和人类之间。一个故事的讲述者在她的成人礼舞会上收到了一条鬣狗，还有的人在家附近发现她的邻居早就已经死了，很可能是吸血鬼。像她的画作一样，卡林顿的短篇故事也同样新颖令人难以忘怀。（来源：Dorothy）

Anne Garreta, Not One Day
安妮•加里塔 《没有一天》

“There's only one key to unlock the secret of our subjectivity: desire,” writes French author Garreta, a member of the Oulipo school, which sets structural constraints on literary composition. The narrator of this short novel, translated from the French by Emma Ramadan, in its first English translation, commits to writing five hours a day for a month, recounting memories of lovers past. The goal: “not one day without a woman.” More than a year later, she has written a dozen portraits. There's *B, whose attractiveness is “a super acute mental intensity”, pursued with uncertainty one night in Rome, and *E, who turns seductive after a boring academic symposium. These encounters and others unfold as Garreta pursues her playful task of “confession, or how to scrape the bottoms of mirrors”. Not One Day won France's Prix Médicis. (Credit: Deep Vellum)
法国作家加里塔写道：“解开我们内心世界秘密的钥匙只有一个，那就是欲望。”加里塔是乌力波流派（Oulipo，“潜在文学工场”的缩写）的一员，该流派在文学作品创作上设定了形式限制。这部短篇小说的首版英文翻译是艾玛•拉马德从法语版本翻译而来，故事的讲述者承诺连续一个月每天写作五小时，叙述对过往恋人的回忆。她的目的是：“每天都有女人相伴。”一年多后，她写出了十二个人物形象。*B想要在罗马寻找一夜情，其魅力是“超级敏锐、洞察一切的内心”。*E参加完无聊的学术研讨会后变身成性感的人。加里塔追求的是有趣的“坦白，或找出事情的真相”，这些遭遇和其他故事据此展开。《没有一天》获得法国美第奇奖。（来源：Deep Vellum出版社）

Adam Kirsch, The Global Novel: Writing the World in the 21st Century
亚当•基尔希 《全球小说：21世纪世界的写作》

Award-winning critic Adam Kirsch achieves a fresh take on world literature in this collection of essays about eight global writers who encompass six languages and five continents. What unites these eight, Kirsch argues, “is the insistence on the global dimension not just of contemporary experience, but of contemporary imagination.” The new migrant novel is one of the most significant literary expressions of the 21st Century. In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah and Mosin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the US is “a stage of life rather than a final destination”. Examining these plus Orhan Pamuk's Snow, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, Haruki Murakami's IQ84, Roberto Bolano's 2666, Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novels and Houllebecq's The Possibility of an Island, Kirsch gives hope for “the capacity of fiction to reveal humanity to itself”. (Credit: Columbia Global Reports)
屡次获奖的评论家亚当•基尔希在这部全球八位作家的散文集中用新颖的角度审视了世界文学。这八位作家来自五个大洲，涵盖了六种语言。基尔希认为，将这八位作家集合在一起的“是对国际化的当代体验以及当代想象力的坚持。”新移民小说是21世纪最重要的文学形式之一。 在奇玛曼达•恩戈齐•阿迪奇埃的《大美妞》和莫辛•哈米德的《拉合尔茶馆的陌生人》中，美国只是“一个人生的舞台，而不是终极目的地”。通过这些书，再加上奥罕•帕慕克的《雪》、玛格丽特•阿特伍德的《羚羊与秧鸡》、村上春树的《IQ84》、罗贝托•波拉尼奥的《2666》、埃莱娜•费兰特的《那不勒斯四部曲》和韦勒贝克的《一座岛屿的可能性》，基尔希对“小说揭示人性的能力”充满希望。（来源：哥伦比亚全球报告）