澳大利亞作家獲得英國布克獎

The Australian novelist Richard Flanagan was awarded the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday for “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” which tells the harrowing story of an Australian surgeon who is held in a Japanese P.O.W. camp and is forced to work on the Thailand-Burma Railway.

澳大利亞小說家理查德·弗拉納根於週二憑小說《通往深遠北方的窄路》(The Narrow Road to the Deep North)獲得布克獎，小說講述了一位被拘押在日軍戰俘營，被迫修建泰緬鐵路的澳大利亞外科醫生的悲慘故事。

Mr. Flanagan, 53, who was born in Tasmania, is the third Australian to win the prize, following Thomas Keneally and the two-time winner Peter Carey.

弗拉納根53歲，出生於塔斯馬尼亞，是第三位獲得布克獎的澳大利亞作家，前兩位是托馬斯·基尼利(Thomas Kenelly)和兩獲布克獎的彼得·凱里(Peter Carey)。

The philosopher A. C. Grayling, the chairman of the judges, called the book “a magnificent novel of love and war.” He praised Mr. Flanagan’s elegant and forceful prose and his ability to bridge “East and West, past and present, with a story of guilt and heroism.”

評委會主席、哲學家A·C·格雷林(A. C. Grayling)說這本書是“一部關於愛與戰爭的精彩小說”，他讚揚弗拉納根優雅而有力的敘述，以及他“以一個充滿罪惡和英雄主義的故事，爲東方與西方、過去與現在”架起橋樑。

“The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” which takes its title from a 17th-century Japanese haiku by Basho, is Mr. Flanagan’s sixth novel. It was inspired by a painful piece of family history: Mr. Flanagan’s father was taken prisoner by the Japanese during World War II and forced to work as a slave laborer.

《通往深遠北方的窄路》書名來自17世紀日本詩人松尾芭蕉所做的俳句，是弗拉納根的第六部小說。靈感來自一段痛苦的家族史：弗拉納根的父親在“二戰”中曾被日軍囚禁，被迫做奴工。

In an article for The Sydney Morning Herald last year, Mr. Flanagan described how he had written five different versions of the story before he was satisfied. In the end, he spent 12 years working on the novel. To research it, he traveled to Thailand and walked along the railway, also known as the Death Railway, occasionally carrying rocks to mimic the experience of the prisoners. In Japan, he interviewed several former guards who had worked on the railway. He also interviewed his father extensively.

去年，弗拉納根在《悉尼先驅晨報》(Sydney Morning Herald)上撰文說，這本書前後寫了五個版本，才終於滿意。最後，他花費了12年的時間創作這部小說。爲了做研究，他到泰國旅行，沿着這條被稱爲“死亡鐵路”的鐵路線行走，有時還扛着石頭，體驗囚犯們的感受。他到日本採訪了若干曾在那條鐵路工作過的戰俘營衛兵，他也對自己的父親做了大量採訪。

His father died just after Mr. Flanagan finished a draft of “The Narrow Road to the Deep North.”

他的父親在《通往深遠北方的窄路》手稿完成後去世。

“He never asked me what the story was, and he trusted me to write something that wouldn’t shame the memory of the people who died,” Mr. Flanagan said in a telephone interview after the awards ceremony. “I only realized after he died what an extraordinary gift that was. As a novelist, you have to be free. Books can’t be an act of filial duty.”

“他從沒問過我這個故事是什麼樣的，他只是委託我來寫點東西，讓死者的記憶不致蒙羞，”頒獎禮後，弗拉納根在電話採訪中說。“直到他去世後，我才意識到這是一份多麼非凡的饋贈。作爲一個小說家，你必須自由。寫書不應當成爲子女的職責。”

The narrative toggles back and forth between the prisoner-of-war camp, where the surgeon, Dorrigo Evans, struggles to survive and remembers a love affair with his uncle’s young wife, and contemporary Australia, where Evans is an old man. The book received strong reviews in the United States and Britain for its stark depictions of the brutal conditions that P.O.W.s faced, and for Mr. Flanagan’s bold decision to write at times from the guards’ point of view.

小說的敘事有時發生在戰俘營中，軍醫多利格·埃文斯(Dorrigo Evans)拼命求生，同時回憶着自己同年輕的嬸嬸的一段風流韻事，有時又切換到現代的澳大利亞，埃文斯已經垂垂老矣。這本書因爲對戰俘殘酷境遇的直白敘述，以及弗拉納根有時使用看守視角敘事的大膽做法，在英美獲得強烈反響。

The novel, which was published by Chatto & Windus in Britain, was released in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf in August. Knopf will print an additional 53,000 copies, a spokesman said.

小說在英國由查託與溫德斯(Chatto & Windus)出版社出版，在美國由阿爾弗萊德·A·科諾普夫(Alfred A. Knopf)出版社於8月出版。科諾普夫出版社的一個發言人說，該社將加印5.3萬本。

The Booker, with its cachet and prize of roughly $80,000, is Britain’s most prestigious literary award. The contest was especially heated and closely watched this year because, for the first time, the prize was open to all novels written in English and published in Britain, regardless of the author’s nationality. Previously, only writers from Britain, the Commonwealth nations, Ireland and Zimbabwe were eligible.

布克獎具有崇高威信，獎金約爲8萬美元，是英國最富盛名的文學獎。今年競爭尤其激烈，難分上下，因爲該獎首次向所有以英文寫作並在英國出版的小說開放，不管作者來自哪個國家。之前只有來自英國、英聯邦國家、愛爾蘭和津巴布韋的作家才能參選。

The new rules incited a backlash in Britain, where some authors and literary critics fretted about a coming American literary invasion. When the longlist of nominees was announced in July, those fears seemed to have been borne out: Five of the 13 nominees were American, prompting the BBC and other British news media outlets to complain that British and Commonwealth authors were being “edged out” by American interlopers. Two American authors, Joshua Ferris and Karen Joy Fowler, made the six-book shortlist.

新規則在英國引起了激烈的反應，一些作家和文學評論家對即將到來的美國文學入侵感到不安。7月，評委會公佈了提名者的大名單，13位提名作品中有五本是美國人創作，BBC和其他英國新聞媒體紛紛抱怨英國和英聯邦作家被美國闖入者“排擠”了。其後，約書亞·費里斯(Joshua Ferris)和凱倫·喬伊·弗勒(Karen Joy Fowler)兩位美國作家的作品入圍了六本書的最終決選名單。

This year’s nominees included Mr. Ferris’s novel “To Rise Again at a Decent Hour,” which features a misanthropic New York dentist; Ms. Fowler’s “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,” about a young woman whose twin sister and older brother disappeared; “J,” a dystopian novel by Howard Jacobson, a former Booker winner; Neel Mukherjee’s “The Lives of Others,” which takes place in 1960s Calcutta; and Ali Smith’s formally innovative novel, “How to Be Both,” which tells two stories — a historical tale about a 15th-century Renaissance artist and a contemporary narrative about a teenage girl whose mother has died — that can be read in either order.

今年的提名作品中包括費里斯的小說《在體面的時刻再度崛起》(To Rise Again at a Decent Hour)，書中寫了一個憤世嫉俗的紐約牙醫；弗勒的作品是《我們都徹底瘋了》(We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves)，寫了一個年輕女人，她的雙胞胎姊妹和哥哥失蹤了；《J》是一部反烏托邦小說，由前布克獎得主霍華德·雅克布森(Howard Jacobson)創作；尼爾·馬克赫耶(Neel Mukherjee)的《別人的生活》(The Lives of Others)發生在20世紀60年代的加爾各答；艾莉·史密斯(Ali Smith)的小說《怎樣二者皆是》(How to Be Both)是一部形式上有所創新的小說，講述了兩個故事，一個是15世紀文藝復興時期藝術家的歷史故事，一個是發生在現代，一名十幾歲的喪母女孩的故事，二者先讀哪個都可以。

Last year, Eleanor Catton won the prize for her 848-page experimental novel, “The Luminaries,” becoming, at 28, the youngest writer to win the Booker.

去年，28歲的埃莉諾·卡頓(Eleanor Catton)憑着848頁的實驗小說《發光體》成了史上最年輕的布克獎得主。

Mr. Flanagan’s victory was cheered by the British newspaper The Guardian, among others, and seemed to ease concerns about the rule changes. He dedicated the novel to Prisoner 335 — his father’s inmate number.

英國《衛報》(The Guardian)等媒體歡慶弗拉納根的成功，對規則改變的不安似乎有所緩解。弗拉納根把這部小說獻給335號囚犯，這是他父親在戰俘營中的號碼。