7. Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010)

　　詹妮弗·伊根，《恶棍来访》(2010年)

　　Egan's Proustian meditation on time, fame and music won the National Book Critics Circle andPulitzer awards. Who's the goon of the title? "Time is the stealth goon, the one you ignore becauseyou are so busy worrying about the goons right in front of you," she says. Egan concocts hernarrative around punk rocker-turned-music producer Bennie Salazar, his sticky-fingered assistantSasha and a circle of wannabes, has-beens and hangers-on. Colette Bancroft, book editor of TheTampa Bay Times, named Egan's novel her top pick "not just because it is a splendidly writtenexperiment in form that succeeds resoundingly, but because the 21st Century is its essentialsubject matter. Egan juxtaposes timeless literary themes, most notably the inexorable journeyfrom youth to age, with an exploration of the ways in which a rapidly changing world reshapes thehuman experience. It's a novel that is prescient, surprising, wise and simply a blast to read." (Anchor)

　　伊根对时间、声誉和音乐进行的普鲁斯特式思考成就了此书，并因此荣获美国国家书评人奖和普利策奖。那标题中的恶棍是谁呢?“时间是最大的恶棍。人们总是因为忙于担忧眼前的‘恶棍’而忽略了时间这个隐藏的恶棍。”作者讲述了一些列故事：曾经的朋克摇滚歌手、现在的音乐制作人——本尼·萨拉查，有盗窃癖的女助手萨莎，以及一群想成名的人、曾经成名的人和无处不在的疯狂的粉丝。《塔帕湾时报》的图书编辑科莱特班·克罗夫特在他的书单中将《恶棍来访》列为第一位，“不仅仅因为这本小说的写作手法颇具实验性且异常成功，更因为此书的基本主题是21世纪。伊根将永恒的文学主题——不可阻挡的韶华易逝，以及如何在急速变化的世界中改变自己适应社会并列起来，给读者带去了睿智的、有先见之明的，但又惊奇简单的阅读体验。”(Anchor出版社)

　　8. Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2012)

　　本·芳汀《比利·林恩漫长的中场休息》，(2012年)

　　Eight rookies from the US army's Bravo squad, fresh from a firefight with Iraqi insurgents, in whichone of their fellow soldiers died and another was disabled, are dubbed war heroes by the Fox Newscable channel. Their two-week stateside victory tour ends with a halftime salute at a DallasCowboys game. Fountain captures the excesses of Texas, American football, business and war,and gives us a memorable narrator in 19-year-old Billy Lynn, with his combination of lust,bedazzlement and post-traumatic stress disorder. "It is sort of weird," he tells a Dallas Cowboyscheerleader, "being honoured for the worst day of your life." (Ecco)

　　在与伊拉克反叛分子交火中，美军一个突击小队的一名士兵牺牲，一名受伤，幸存者中的八名士兵却因为福克斯电视台的宣传而成为国家英雄。他们回到美国本土，进行为期两周的“胜利展演”，最后一站是在达拉斯牛仔队橄榄球比赛的中场进行亮相。芳汀用19岁少年比利·林恩的口吻讲述了这个令人难忘的故事，他的渴望、他的困惑迷茫和他的创伤后应激障碍交织在一起，融合进了无节制发展的德州、橄榄球、商业和战争里面。比利告诉达拉斯牛仔队拉拉队队长：“在你最糟糕的一天获得荣誉，真是疯了!”

　　9. Ian McEwan, Atonement (2001)

　　伊恩·麦克尤恩《赎罪》，(2001年)

　　The novel opens on a summer day in 1935, when 13-year-old Briony shows her mother a playshe's written to perform with her three cousins the next evening. "Briony was hardly to know itthen, but this was the project's highest point of fulfillment," McEwan writes. "Nothing came near itfor satisfaction, all else was dreams and frustration."That evening, Briony witnesses her 15-year-oldcousin Lola being assaulted in the darkened woods. Her testimony implicates Robbie, her sisterCecilia's boyfriend from Cambridge and son of the family house maid, and he is jailed. In a secondsection, McEwan gives a panoramic account of the harrowing evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, withRobbie among those saved. Realising she has ruined Cecilia and Robbie's lives, Briony works as anurse during the Blitz in a third section. As McEwan follows these characters through six decades,Briony's search for redemption evolves into a meditation on the power of art. (Anchor)

　　这部小说以1935年的一个夏日开篇，13岁的女孩布里奥妮在向她的母亲展示她刚完成的剧本，并准备在第二天晚上和她的三个表姐一起表演。“布里奥妮当时还不知道，这已经是她的这个剧本最成功的时刻了!其他的设想都只是些白日梦，不能为她带来任何满足，甚至会让她尝到沮丧的滋味。”当天晚上，布里奥妮15岁的表姐洛拉遭强暴，布里奥妮在黑暗的树林中看到了凶手。布里奥妮出庭指证罪犯就是家庭女仆的儿子罗比，罗比来自剑桥，也是布里奥妮姐姐塞西莉亚的男朋友，罗比被捕入狱。在书的第二部分，麦克尤恩对敦刻尔克大撤退的颓败进行了全景描述，罗比就是其中的幸存者。在第三部分，布里奥妮认识到自己的误解毁了塞西莉亚和罗比的一生，渴望赎罪的她成为闪电战期间的一名医护人员。整本书跨越60年时间，一生忏悔的布里奥妮最后将情感注入笔下成就了其艺术之魂。(Anchor出版社)

　　*注：闪电战(Blitz)，1940年到1941年德军对英国各主要城市的“大空袭”，即“不列颠空战”。为实施入侵英国的“海狮”计划，德国空军对伦敦实施了近10个月的毁灭性大轰炸。英国得到英联邦成员、其他被占欧洲国家和中立国美国的空军帮助，战争在1941年10月12日以德国的失败告终。

　　10. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)

　　奇麻曼达·恩格兹·阿迪切，《半轮黄日》(2006年)

　　In her audacious and vividly imagined second novel, Adichie drew upon her ancestral past to writeabout the Biafra conflict, which traumatised her country and her family for three years after theIgbo people of eastern Nigeria seceded in 1967. The novel is told from the perspectives of twinsisters Olanna and Kainene, a 13-year-old houseboy and Richard, a British expatriate who is in lovewith Kainene. Olanna's academic boyfriend, who favours secession, is also a key character asAdichie shows the repercussions of postcolonial power struggles on individual lives. Adichie’s 2013novel Americanah also ranked high in the poll, but missed out on a spot in the top 12 by one vote. (Anchor)

　　阿迪切利用大胆生动的想象，追忆先祖故事，创作了她的第二部作品，内容与比夫拉战争有关。1967年，伊博人占多数的尼日利亚东区脱离联邦，引发三年内战，摧毁了尼日利亚这个国家，也给尼日利亚人民带来了深重苦难。小说的主人公是双胞胎姐妹奥兰娜和凯楠，以及一个13岁的男仆和喜爱凯楠的英国侨民理查德。奥兰娜的男友也是一个关键人物，他是大学学者，支持东区独立。作者通过这些人物形象，向读者展示了后殖民时代国家权力斗争对个人的影响。阿迪切2013年出版的小说《美国史迹》在调查中同样广受推崇，但因一票之差错失了12强。(Anchor出版社)

　　11. Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000)

　　査蒂·史密斯《白牙》(2000年)

　　Smith, then a 23-year-old prodigy, wowed the literary world with her first novel, which introduceda writer of inimitable wit and scope. White Teeth, which won Whitbread and Guardian first bookawards, is set in London, where Archie Jones and Samal Iqbal, friends who met while serving inWWII, have settled to raise their families. Smith opens as Archie, divorced by his second wife, sits inhis "fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate face down on the steering wheel". He's chosen suicide onNew Year's Day 1975, his car parked in front of a halal butcher's shop, only to be saved by theowner. As White Teeth unfolds, it is chockablock with vivid scenes and characters, a portrait ofpostcolonial multicultural London: "Children with first and last names on a direct collision course.Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medicalchecks", Smith writes. (Vintage)

　　史密斯在23岁时就凭借处女作《白牙》中独特的智慧和视角而震惊文坛，荣获当年的惠布瑞特最佳处女作奖和《卫报》最佳处女作奖。《白牙》的故事背景是伦敦，讲述的是二战战友阿吉·琼斯和萨马·伊克巴尔两个家庭的悲欢离合。《白牙》以阿吉结束第二次婚姻开头，1975年的元旦，“他坐在充满浓烟的骑士火枪手牌旅行车里，脸朝下，趴在方向盘上”。他将车停靠在一家清真肉铺的门口，做好了自杀的准备，最后被屠夫救下了。随着故事展开，作者给我们呈现了后殖民时代多元文化并存的伦敦生活，刻画了生动的人物形象。史密斯写道：“孩子们的姓名就是文化碰撞的直接展示，隐含了大迁徙、拥挤的飞机船只、寒冷中抵达和医疗检查等意思。”(Vintage出版社)

　　12. Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (2002)

　　杰弗里·尤金尼德斯，《中性》(2002年)

　　"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; andthen again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974,"Eugenides writes in the opening lines of his novel. At 14, Calliope Stephanides discovers she has arare recessive mutation that renders her a pseudo-hermaphrodite. Claiming her "male brain", sheshifts genders and becomes Cal. In often exuberant language, Eugenides layers questions of fateand free will onto Cal's coming-of-age story and the tale of the entrepreneurial rise of his parents,Desdemona and Lefty. (They have their own genetic secret.) Ultimately Cal’s condition gives him anear mythic gift – “the ability to communicate between the genders, to see not with themonovision of one sex but in the stereoscope of both". Middlesex bridged the gap between criticaland commercial acclaim, as well, winning a Pulitzer and selling millions of copies. (Picador)

　　作者这样开篇：“我拥有两次生命：第一次是1960年1月，一个晴朗无雾的日子作为一个女婴出生在底特律;第二次是1974年8月在密歇根佩托斯基的一个急诊室里作为一个男孩重生。 ”14岁的卡莉欧碧·斯迪芬奈兹患上了罕见的基因隐性突变，使她成为了一名阴阳人。卡莉欧碧考虑到自己的男性本性，她变性成了卡尔。尤金尼德斯用意趣盎然的语言讲述了卡尔的成长故事，以及卡尔父母列夫提和苔丝狄蒙娜的创业经历(他们也有自己不为人知的基因缺陷)。最终，卡尔的基因问题却让他拥有了一项神奇的能力——“他能自由地游走在两性世界之间，从双性的立体角度思考问题而不仅仅站在单性的角度”。《中性》不仅荣获了普利策奖，而且销量百万，在文学成就和商业成就上都表现地很突出。

　　更多精彩内容 >> 新东方网英语频道 

　　全国新东方英语课程搜索

（编辑：何莹莹）