曼布克奖得主乔治·桑德斯 | 念念不忘，必有回响
George Saunders Wins the Man Booker Prize for ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’
George Saunders has won the Man Booker Prize for his first novel, “Lincoln in the Bardo.” David Crosby
George Saunders’s surreal, experimental first novel, “Lincoln in the Bardo,” won the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday, marking the second year in a row that the prize has gone to an American author.
乔治·桑德斯超现实主义的实验性处女作《林肯在阴阳界》周二获得曼布克奖，美国作家连续两年摘得奖牌。
The novel unfolds in a cemetery in 1862, where a grieving Abraham Lincoln visits the crypt that holds the body of his 11-year-old son, Willie, who died of typhoid fever. At the graveyard, Willie’s spirit is joined by a garrulous, motley community of ghosts who exist in the liminal state between life and death.
小说发生在1862年的某个墓地，悲伤的亚伯拉罕·林肯造访了教堂墓窖，那里存放着他11岁儿子维利的遗体，儿子死于伤寒。在墓园，维利的灵魂遇到一群七嘴八舌的鬼魂，他们在死生之间的罅隙中游荡。
At times, the narrative feels disjointed and jarring, with dialogue among the ghosts, interspersed with scraps of historical research and snippets of contemporary news accounts that Mr. Saunders gathered while doing research.
叙事总让人感觉支离破碎，鬼魂的对话间或有历史研究片段和桑德斯做研究时收集的当代新闻报道的片段。
At a news conference in London on Tuesday, Lola Young, the chair of judges, said that the novel was “unique” and “stood out because of its innovation, its very different styling; the way in which it paradoxically brought to life these almost dead souls, not quite dead souls, this other world.”
周二在伦敦举办的新闻发布会上，评委会主席罗拉·杨格说，小说“独一无二”，“因其创意和非常独特的风格脱颖而出，用充满矛盾的方式赋予了彼岸世界这些将死未死的魂灵以生命。”
By awarding the prize to Mr. Saunders, the judges will likely face a renewed backlash from critics who have complained that the prize has become Americanized. Last year, Paul Beatty became the first American to win when he received the prize for “The Sellout,” a dark satire about race and the legacy of slavery and segregation in America. This year, three of the six finalists were American, which prompted another round of criticism that emerging British and Commonwealth writers were being overlooked.
评委们将奖项授予桑德斯先生，可能遭遇评论家新一轮反弹，他们抱怨曼布克奖被美国化了。去年，保罗·比蒂凭借小说《销售一空》成为第一位获得曼布克奖的美国作家，小说是一部“关于种族和美国奴隶制与种族隔离遗产的黑色讽刺小说”。今年，六名入选者中有三名是美国人，这引发又一轮批评，认为新生代英国和英联邦作家被忽视。
Speaking on behalf of the judges, Ms. Young dismissed the notion that Americans have colonized Britain’s most prestigious literary award. “We don’t look at the nationality of the writer,” she said. “We’re solely concerned with the book, with what that book is telling us.”
杨格代表评委驳斥了美国人占领英国最负盛名的文学奖这一说法。“我们不关注作家的国籍，”她说。“我们只关心书，书告诉我们什么。”
Until recently, the Man Booker, which was first awarded in 1969, was restricted to novels written by authors from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth nations. In 2014, the contest was opened to any novel written in English and published in Britain. Past winners include Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, V .S. Naipaul and Hilary Mantel.
1969年开始颁发的曼布克奖，直到不久前还只限于英国、爱尔兰和英联邦国家作家的小说。2014年，该奖向用英语写作并在英国出版的小说开放。曾经的奖项得主包括玛格丽特·阿特伍德、石黑一雄、维·苏·奈保尔和希拉里·曼特尔。
The expansion of the prize parameters has drawn criticism from some in the literary world, who warned that the Booker would lose its British character with the incursion of American writers. After Mr. Beatty won last year, a group of writers, including Julian Barnes and A. S. Byatt, denounced the decision to let Americans compete.
奖项扩容引发文学界批评，他们认为布克奖纳入美国作家会丢掉英国特性。去年比蒂获奖后，包括朱利安·巴恩斯和A·S·拜厄特在内的一群作家群起攻之，谴责让美国人参与竞争。
Ron Charles, a book critic for The Washington Post, criticized the list of finalists for being overly American, writing that“for any serious reader of fiction in this country, the Americanization of the Booker Prize is a lost opportunity to learn about great books that haven’t already been widely heralded.”
《华盛顿邮报》的书评家荣·查尔斯也批评入选名单中净是美国面孔，认为“对这个国家任何严肃的小说读者而言，布克奖美国化让他们失去机会，无法了解到未被广泛宣传的好书。”
In addition to Mr. Saunders, the other Americans to make the list of finalists were Paul Auster, who was nominated for “4321,” an epic narrative that tells a Jewish boy’s coming-of-age story in four different versions; and Emily Fridlund, for her debut novel, “History of Wolves,” about a teenage girl growing up in a commune in the Midwest.
除桑德斯先生外，其他杀入决赛的美国作家有保罗·奥斯特，其提名作品是《4321》，这是一部史诗作品，叙述了一个犹太男孩成长经历，故事情节有四个版本；还有艾米丽·弗里德伦德的处女作《狼的历史》，主人公是中西部群居社区长大的一个女孩。
The other finalists were the British novelist Fiona Mozley, whose debut novel “Elmet,” centers on a single father raising his teenage children in rural Yorkshire; the British-Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid, nominated for “Exit West,” a surreal, dystopian story about two refugees fleeing a civil war through magic doors, and the British novelist Ali Smith, whose novel “Autumn,” about the relationship between a middle-aged British woman and a 101-year-old man, explores the rise of British nationalism. Ms. Smith, who has been shortlisted for the Booker four times, was considered a favorite to win this year.
其他入围者还有英国小说家菲奥娜·莫兹利，其处女作《爱尔迈特》讲的是单身父亲在约克郡农村拉扯孩子们长的的故事；巴基斯坦裔英国作家莫欣·哈米德以小说《逃离西方》获得提名，这是一本超现实主义的反乌托邦故事，两个难民通过魔法门逃离了内战。英国小说家阿莉·史密斯的小说《秋》关于一个英国中年妇女同101岁的老人间的关系，探讨了英国民族主义的崛起。史密斯女士四次杀入布克奖短名单，一度被认为是今年的热门。
“Lincoln in the Bardo” won near-universal praise from reviewers when it was released in February of this year, and became a No. 1 best seller. In a review in The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani wrote that “Saunders’s extraordinary verbal energy is harnessed, for the most part, in the service of capturing the pathos of everyday life.”
今年二月出版时，《林肯在阴阳界》广受评论家赞誉，并成为排名第一的畅销书。角谷美智子在《纽约时报》书评中写道，“桑德斯驾驭着不同凡响的语言能力，很大程度上捕获了日常生活中的凄美。”
Before he wrote “Lincoln in the Bardo,” Mr. Saunders was best known for his dark and often funny futuristic, dystopian short stories. Born in Amarillo, Tex., and raised in and near Chicago, Mr. Saunders never imagined growing up that he could one day write for a living.
《林肯在阴阳界》发表之前，桑德斯先生以写黑色、常常趣味横生的未来主义、反乌托邦短篇小说闻名。他出生于德克萨斯州阿马里洛，在芝加哥及周边长大，儿时从没想过长大以后会以写作为生。
He got a degree in geophysics from the Colorado School of Mines, then worked as a geophysicist in Sumatra, where he read to keep himself occupied at a remote camp. When he returned to the United States, he supported himself with odd jobs, working as a doorman, a roofer, in a convenience store and in a slaughterhouse.
他在科罗拉多矿业大学获得地质物理学学位，随后在苏门答腊岛做地质物理学家，工作之余他在偏远的营地阅读打发时光。回到美国后，他做些零工谋生，看大门，瓦工，在便利店或肉铺干活。
He eventually enrolled in an M.F.A. program at Syracuse University, and in 1996, he published his debut fiction collection, “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline,” which established him as an innovative writer with a dark, demente 52 28937 52 15287 0 0 2322 0 0:00:12 0:00:06 0:00:06 2666d streak. He went on to publish several other collections and novellas, including his widely celebrated 2013 short story collection, “Tenth of December.”
他最终被锡拉丘兹大学美术硕士项目录取，1996年，出版处女小说集《衰退时期的内战疆土》，成为一名创意作家，文字有种黑色、疯狂的调调。他后来又出版了几部小说集和中篇小说，包括2013年出版的广受赞誉的短篇集《12月10日》。
Mr. Saunders first got the idea for “Lincoln in the Bardo” many years ago, when he was visiting Washington and his wife’s cousin pointed out the crypt, and told him the story about how Lincoln would visit his son’s body. The story stayed with him for some 20 years, but felt too daunting. Finally, in 2012, he began to work on the novel.
桑德斯先生很多年前就想到要写《林肯在阴阳界》了，当时他游览了华盛顿，妻子的表弟指着教堂墓窖告诉他林肯以前会来那里看他的儿子。他二十来年念念不忘，一直萦绕在脑海中。2012年，他终于开始动笔。
Mr. Saunders, a Tibetan Buddhist, drew on the Buddhist notion of the bardo — the phase of existence between death and rebirth — bringing a supernatural layer to the historical setting. With the chorus of ghosts in the cemetery, Mr. Saunders tied Lincoln’s suffering to a universal human plight of mortality and loss, giving it an epic, mythical quality.
桑德是是一名藏传佛教徒，他借用佛教中阴阳界的概念，那是介于死与生之间的所在，这给历史蒙上了一层超自然的色彩。在众灵喧哗的墓地中，桑德斯将林肯的苦痛同死亡与失去这一普遍人类苦难联系起来，让小说具有了史诗般的神秘风格。
“For me, the book was about that terrible conundrum: We seem to be born to love, but everything we love comes to an end,” Mr. Saunders said in an email interview with The New York Times Book Review. “What do we do with that?”
“对我而言，该书说的是一个难题：看起来我们生来就要去爱，但我们所爱的一切都要走到终点，”桑德斯邮件回复《纽约时报》书评时说。“我们又该如何呢？”