新西兰作家Lloyd Jones今年的新作,用一句话概括整个小说,它是一则天真而残酷的寓言。
故事发生在太平洋的一个岛屿上,红毛军(redskins)与造反者rebels之间内战纷起,岛上居民终日生活在战争带来的不安和惶恐中,白人们都早早举家撤离,唯有Mr.Watts,为陪伴他的土著妻子Grace,留了下来,替代成为孩子们的老师。小说通过十三岁的女孩Matilda之口进行叙述,狄更斯的小说Great Expectations《远大前程》是这部作品的核心。一开始,Mr.Watts将它作为课本,每天上课朗读一章,在聆听的过程中,主人公Mister Pip和他的世界,深深攫住了孩子们的心,文字的虚构变成了某种真实的存在。
突然有一天,战争的残酷侵入这天真的幻想里。野蛮的红毛军闯入村子,逼他们交出造反者Mister Pip,偏偏此时,这本小说离奇失踪,遍寻不获。红毛军一怒之下,把村民的房屋、里面的物品,烧了个一干二净,包括那本被藏起来的Great Expectations。在他们再度进村搜索Mister Pip时,Matilda目睹了最兽性的残杀。这一部分的描写,语言出奇的冷静不动声色,见出作者的功力,令人难忘。
失去母亲的Matilda,被营救出岛屿,与在澳大利亚打工的父亲团聚。重新回到学校的她,在图书馆找到一本Great Expectations,却发现Mr.Watts并没有完全照着狄更斯的故事来讲,她选择狄更斯为自己论文的论题,可随着对作者、作品的深入,她失望的发现,原来很多东西与想象的并不一样,原来需要的润饰的不是文学,而是生活。(”That is when I learned there is a place for embellishment after all. But it belongs to life──not to literature.”)
发表于2024-11-18
Mister Pip 2024 pdf epub mobi 电子书
皮普先生,这个岛上唯一的白人,作为老师他也许不是最好的,但是他的确用他的故事改变了一个平凡的小女孩儿的人生。在那个战争的年代,用他的声音给孩子们描绘了另一个充满爱、信任和勇气的世界。如果手边刚好有书中读到的《远大前程》不妨一并读读,一定会感受到和当初读的时...
评分My only knowledge about Great Expectations is that it is a classic novel by Charles Dickens. I was supposed to read through the novel when in college. But I have so many other things to catch up with as a country girl coming to the big city that I hardly ev...
评分去年第一次读完这本书时,感觉重读可能会很久,整整过了一年,我还是把它拿出来重读了一遍。这本寓言似的小书极大地肯定了文学的价值,它试图说出文学对于人的整个生命和灵魂都具有非常正面的影响。书中不乏一些不错的句子: 1.“孩子们,我来给你们讲一讲信仰,”她说。你们...
评分在后殖民主义文学的课堂上读到了这本小书,两百多页出头,阅读体验却并不轻松。故事讲述了二十世纪晚期,当四分之三的世界都沐浴在蓬勃的朝气里,从世纪初的漫长黑夜留下的废墟中兴起时,历史的后坐力狠狠击中了太平洋上的巴布亚新几内亚。殖民主义的崩溃带来了独立,为了建立...
评分My only knowledge about Great Expectations is that it is a classic novel by Charles Dickens. I was supposed to read through the novel when in college. But I have so many other things to catch up with as a country girl coming to the big city that I hardly ev...
图书标签: 英文 novel 新西兰 rewriting postcolonial Zealand New Literature
In a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives.
On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations.
So begins this rare, original story about the abiding strength that imagination, once ignited, can provide. As artillery echoes in the mountains, thirteen-year-old Matilda and her peers are riveted by the adventures of a young orphan named Pip in a city called London, a city whose contours soon become more real than their own blighted landscape. As Mr. Watts says, “A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe.” Soon come the rest of the villagers, initially threatened, finally inspired to share tales of their own that bring alive the rich mythology of their past. But in a ravaged place where even children are forced to live by their wits and daily survival is the only objective, imagination can be a dangerous thing.
一个人绅士与否,跟他的财富和社会地位无关,跟他的处境无关。绅士,总是去做正确的事情。白人Mr.Watts凭借《远大前程》带领黑人孩子们进入到一个新的世界,让他们暂时远离现实的战乱和恐惧,也慢慢培养起孩子们对知识的好奇心和渴望,对生活和未来的希望。不管怎样,他是一名绅士。
评分一个人绅士与否,跟他的财富和社会地位无关,跟他的处境无关。绅士,总是去做正确的事情。白人Mr.Watts凭借《远大前程》带领黑人孩子们进入到一个新的世界,让他们暂时远离现实的战乱和恐惧,也慢慢培养起孩子们对知识的好奇心和渴望,对生活和未来的希望。不管怎样,他是一名绅士。
评分以狄翁《远大前程》为注脚的书。
评分一个人绅士与否,跟他的财富和社会地位无关,跟他的处境无关。绅士,总是去做正确的事情。白人Mr.Watts凭借《远大前程》带领黑人孩子们进入到一个新的世界,让他们暂时远离现实的战乱和恐惧,也慢慢培养起孩子们对知识的好奇心和渴望,对生活和未来的希望。不管怎样,他是一名绅士。
评分以狄翁《远大前程》为注脚的书。
Mister Pip 2024 pdf epub mobi 电子书