BBC推荐：五月必读书单

丽莎•柯 《离去的人》

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)

丽莎•柯的首部小说《离乡人》获得了2016年美国笔会社会类小说先锋奖。小说主人公佩兰是一名闯荡的少女，她从中国闽江村途径曼谷、阿姆斯特丹、多伦多前往纽约。在那里，她化名波莉，在一家制衣厂每天工作13小时，希望能在几年内还清47000美元(约合人民币32万元)的高利贷。(她清楚借高利贷的规矩：要么立刻还钱，要么永远消失)。但是她怀上了一个老家邻居的孩子，而儿子诞生带来的麻烦彻底毁了她的生活。波莉在儿子戴明10岁的时候消失了。戴明被北部的一对夫妇收养，但是他无法忘记自己的母亲，他渴望知道发生了什么。柯通过细腻敏锐的细节描写探索了移民问题的混乱和美国一代移民的复杂性。(来源：阿尔冈昆出版社)

César Aira, The Little Buddhist Monk & The Proof

塞萨尔•艾拉《小和尚》和《证据》

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)

阿根廷作家塞萨尔•艾拉的《小和尚》和《证据》由尼克•凯斯特翻译，这两本风格迥异的小说显示了作者宽泛的题材涉猎，艾拉的小说超过90部，以创意有趣、叙事富有张力和感染力著称。在《小和尚》中，一个韩国僧人遇到了痴迷于“文化空间”的法国摄影师和他的妻子。他提议做向导带他们去佛教寺庙。很快，这位僧人似乎正把他们带进一个可能找不到出路的平行空间里。在《证据》中，两个女同小混混试图在布宜诺斯艾利斯的弗洛雷斯广场上搭讪一名路过的16岁少女。冰淇淋、机智的套话和一场超市抢劫案将让两人慢慢将少女拉入了她们的生活轨道。艾拉已经入围布克国际文学奖。(来源：新方向出版社)

Tracy Chevalier, New Boy

特蕾西•雪佛兰《新来的男孩》

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)

雪佛兰的《新来的男孩》改写自《奥赛罗》，小说轻而易举地制造了紧张感。她将这个关于爱情、嫉妒、种族主义和暴力的故事的背景设在上世纪70年代的华盛顿，那里也是她的家乡。奥塞是一个加纳外交官的儿子，他在6年内换了4家学校。这一次是一所白人学校，而他的存在让人意外。第一个注意到他的人是迪伊。她是6年级最受欢迎的女孩。奥赛在午餐时间证明自己是一个强壮的足球运动员，还在操场上轻抚了迪伊的脸颊。伊恩是班级里最精明最会算计的学生，他发现了迪伊和新来的男生之间的火花，并发誓要毁掉它。在一天放学时，伊恩让迪伊和奥赛反目，并谋划了一场令人震惊的暴力事件。(来源：霍加斯出版社)

Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy: A Memoir

帕翠莎•洛克伍德《神父爸爸回忆录》

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)

诗人帕翠莎•洛克伍德的父亲是一名天主教神父，他是钻了基督教会的空子才被任命为天主教神父。在成为天主教徒前，他是一个已婚的路德教会牧师。因此，他有资格申请到罗马获得特许，学习成为神父，并在有妻儿的情况下获得任免。洛克伍德的回忆录内容深入而幽默，她在书中写道，自己的父亲还是个“生性顽劣”的人。开始写这本书时，洛克伍德和丈夫杰森“身无分文、精疲力竭”，他们在堪萨斯城的娘家和她古怪的父母住了一年。从少女时代起，她就从记忆中迸发出沉思，直到现在，洛克伍德已被《纽约时报》称为“荤段子隐喻女王”。她什么时候开启作诗天赋的呢?洛克伍德形容“那种开窍的感觉出现时，两个单词会突然自动联系在一起，或想要结合，或者一直连在一起，那些语句会自己蹦出来。”(来源：河源出版社)

Antonio Di Benedetto, Nest in the Bones

安东尼奥•迪•班内德托《以骨为巢》

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)

这部暗黑、怪异的作品集是作家罗贝托•波拉尼奥的首部英文作品。他被誉为“最伟大的拉丁美洲作家之一”。该书由玛蒂娜•布罗内尔翻译，包含波拉尼奥早年在阿根廷的作品，在“肮脏战争”期间，他曾被囚禁折磨。书中还包括他被流放西班牙时的作品。在本书的同名故事中，一个小男孩儿把自己的头顶变成了“无忧无虑的麻雀、金丝雀、鹧鸪”的鸟巢。而它们却被一群“莫名贪婪的”秃鹰取而代之。他写道：“秃鹰残忍地伤害他，伤害到骨子里。”在其他故事中，一个被囚禁的男人梦到警卫不让他休息，一个流放归来的男人感觉他在祖国就是个陌生人。迪•班内德托巧妙地提及博格斯，他和皮兰德娄、陀斯妥也夫斯基对他有早期影响。(来源：群岛图书)

Charlie English, The Storied City

查理•英格里希《传奇的城市》

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)

《卫报》国际新闻前主编查理•英格里希以英国探险家亚历山大•戈登•莱因一次近乎神秘的探险开始了他的故事。1825年，莱因由的黎波里出发，他从图阿雷格人恶意的袭击和一场黄热病中幸存下来，到达了目的地，成为第一个到达传说中的城市——廷巴克图的欧洲人。他写信给指挥站说发现了大量记录，然后他就从历史中消失了。人们认为，在2012年反政府武装摧毁廷巴克图时，这本“廷巴克图手稿”就已经被他们损毁。英格里希生动地描写了对历史的探索和混乱的现实。他以印第安纳琼斯式的风格着重讲述了勇敢的图书馆管理员Abdel Kader Haidara牵头撤离手稿的行动。(来源：河源出版社)

Agnete Friis, What My Body Remembers

阿格奈泰•斐瑞斯《我的身体记住的》

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)

《我的身体记住的》是阿格奈泰•斐瑞斯第一部独自创作的小说，由林迪•福尔克•范•罗延翻译自丹麦语。该书与北欧畅销黑色小说《箱子里的男孩》水平相当。《箱子里的男孩》是她与Lene Kaaberbøl合著的小说。27岁的艾拉•尼高是一个身存缺陷，让人难忘的角色。艾拉从7岁开始就受到丹麦寄养机构的监护。她说原因是“我的父亲打爆了我母亲的脑袋。”艾拉深受创伤后精神失调的困扰，试图通过毒品和酒精来抗争。艾拉面临的是让儿子埃里克斯在看护机构长大。她开始反抗，将埃里克斯带到丹麦北部的沿海社区。那里就是她的家庭被暴力摧毁的地方。在邻居持续不断的密切关注和带着诡异熟悉感的陌生人的友善对待下，艾拉发现了一系列越来越危险的真相。(来源：Soho Crime)