【英语阅读】《纽约时报》推荐年轻人最应该读的11本英文书

There’s been a surge of acclaimed fiction about war in the 21st century, but Joseph Heller’s satire “Catch-22” remains the gold standard. Heller served in World War II, and “Catch-22” reflects the horrors and absurdities of war and its attendant bureaucracies.

自21世纪起，有关战争类的小说开始大量涌现，但约瑟夫·海勒的讽刺小说《第二十二条军规》依然保持着它的黄金地位。作者约瑟夫·海勒参加过第二次世界大战，小说《第二十二条军规》反映了战争的恐怖和荒谬，以及随之而来的官僚做派。

In 1974, Heller told The Paris Review that he learned about his own books by the reaction to them. “It surprised me that things in ‘Catch-22’ turned out to be very funny,” he said. “I thought I was being humorous, but I didn’t know I would make people laugh.”

1974年，海勒告诉《巴黎评论》说，他是从其它人对那本书的反应才弄懂了自己小说。“《第二十二条军规》这本书的内容让人觉得很搞笑，这着实让我感到很惊讶”，他说，“我自认为自己很幽默，但我没想到的是，我竟有能力可以让大家发笑。”

作者 托妮·莫里森

2006年，纽约时报书评让上百位杰出的作家，评论家，编辑和其它类型的文人选出过去25年来已出版的最好的美国小说，托妮·莫里森的《宠儿》，荣登榜首。

In the Book Review in 1987, Margaret Atwood said Morrison’s “versatility and technical and emotional range appear to know no bounds.

这是一本有关美国奴隶制情感代价的灵魂小说。在1987年的书评中，玛格丽特·阿特伍德（加拿大女诗人）提到托妮·莫里森“多才多艺、文学技巧深厚、情感丰富。

If there were any doubts about her stature as a pre-eminent American novelist, of her own or any other generation, ‘Beloved’ will put them to rest.”

托妮·莫里森在她那个时代或是其它任何年代都是美国有史以来最杰出的作家，如果有人对此有异议，那一部《宠儿》就足以让他们相形见绌。”

作者 查蒂·史密斯

Zadie Smith’s debut novel can serve as an inspiration to anyone in their 20s, since it was published to worldwide acclaim when Smith was just 24 years old.

查蒂·史密斯的处女作是一部可以启发20多岁年轻人的小说，史密斯24岁时就出版了这本书，之后它就在世界范围内广受好评了。

“White Teeth,” set in turn-of-the-millennium multicultural London and teeming with characters, slang, jokes and insights, might still be the best place to start.

《白牙》的故事设定是在千禧年之初，地点是有着多元文化的伦敦，书里充满了各色人物，俚语，笑话和真谛。

In her review, Michiko Kakutani wrote that Smith has an “instinctive storytelling talent and a fully fashioned voice that’s street-smart and learned, sassy and philosophical all at the same time,” and “can do comedy, drama and satire, and do them all with exceptional confidence and brio.”

在对她的评论中，角谷美智子说“史密斯有一种与生俱来的讲故事的天赋，用非常新颖的声音，囊括了经验老道和新学的写作方法，文章活泼的同时又富有哲理，又“可喜剧，戏剧，讽刺作品，超级自信又生动的把它们同时结合在一起。”

作者 朱诺特·迪亚兹

The story of the title character, an overweight geek living with his Dominican-American family in New Jersey, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.

故事里的主角迪亚兹是一个超级胖的怪胎，他与一个多米尼加籍的美国家庭一起住在新泽西，最终他赢得了美国的普利策奖。

Michiko Kakutani called it “so original it can only be described as Mario Vargas Llosa meets ‘Star Trek’ meets David Foster Wallace meets Kanye West.”

角谷美智子说这本书：“它是如此的真实，只能描述为马里奥·巴尔加斯·略萨遇到了《星际迷航》，遇到了大卫·福斯特·华莱士，遇到了坎耶·维斯特（歌手）。”

作者 詹姆斯·鲍德温

James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” has remained deeply relevant for more than half a century, never more so than during the current debates around policing, criminal justice, voting rights and other subjects.

詹姆斯·鲍德温的《下一次将是烈火》在半个多世纪以来都具有重要意义，对当今有关治安，刑事司法，选择权等课题更是如此。

The book is composed of two essays about being black in America. The first, written in the form of a letter to Baldwin’s teenage nephew, was a direct inspiration for Ta-Nehisi Coates’s recent best-seller “Between the World and Me,” written as a letter to Coates’s son. Coates has called Baldwin’s essays “amazing acts of intellectual and emotional courage.”

这本书由2篇随笔组成，写的是在美国的黑人。第一篇，是以信件的形式，写给了鲍德温十几岁的侄子。其灵感来自塔-内西斯·科特斯最近的畅销书《在世界与我之间》——一封写给科特斯的儿子的信。科特斯称鲍德温的随笔充满了“智慧情感和勇气的神奇的作用”。

作者 琼·迪迪昂

Didion’s essays in “Slouching” are firmly rooted in the culture of the 1960s — Haight-Ashbury, Joan Baez, political zealotry of various stripes — but their brilliance is in the way they still speak to the character (and characters) of this country today.

迪迪昂在《向伯利恒跋涉》的短文里，坚定的植入了20世纪60年代的美国嬉皮区文化。而琼·贝兹，是一个跟她持有不同政见的狂热政治分子-但他们的伟大之处就在于，他们的才华至今仍然是这个国家的象征。

作者 罗伯特·卡罗

在20多岁时读这本书可能会花点儿功夫，因为这本书有1300页左右，但它确实值得一读。

“The Power Broker,” his Pulitzer Prize-winning life of Robert Moses, would have cemented his towering reputation had it been his only book. Never elected to any public office, Moses nevertheless did more to change the shape of New York City and Long Island in the 20th century (their bridges, highways, housing, public spaces) than arguably any other figure.

作为获过普利策奖的罗伯特·摩西，他唯一的一本书《权力掮客》为他带来了无上的荣耀。摩西从不竞选任何公职，却在改变20世纪的纽约市和长岛（桥、高速公路、房屋、公共场所）上做了许多事情，做的无疑比任何人都多。

Caro’s book works as both a sweeping epic about an oversize personality and a granular look at the mechanisms of power and influence.

卡罗的书既是一部关于人性的笼统而意义重大的史诗，又是对权力与影响力机制的入微观察。

　A Supposedly Fun Thing， I’ll Never Do Again

　　一件可能有趣，而我永远不会再做的事情(1997)

　　有趣，随笔合集

　　作者 大卫·福斯特·华莱士

　　刚刚推荐了《权力掮客》，再推荐华莱士的《无尽的玩笑》就有些重复了。所以，给大家推荐这本更接地气的非小说类合集。It includes pieces about tennis, David Lynch and the influence of television on fiction writers. But it’s anchored by two long, hysterically funny essays that Wallace wrote for Harper’s Magazine: one about his time on a cruise ship, the other about his visit to the Illinois State Fair.书里包含了有关网球、大卫·林奇（美国导演）、电视对小说作家的影响等内容。这本书主要是由大卫·福斯特·华莱士为哈泼斯杂志写的2篇长得离谱的滑稽随笔构成：一篇是他在一艘游轮上的时光，另一篇是他去参观了伊利诺伊州博览会。In The New York Times Book Review, Laura Miller wrote that Wallace’s “distinctive and infectious style, an acrobatic cartwheeling between high intellectual discourse and vernacular insouciance, makes him tremendously entertaining to read, whatever his subject.”在纽约书评里，劳拉·米勒写道：华莱士文章的独特的风格和感染力，像是在“阳春白雪和下里巴人”之间耍着杂技，使得华莱士的文章读起来非常非常有趣，不管他的题目是什么。

　　A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

　　一个惊人天才的伤心之作(2000)

　　家庭，回忆录

　　作者 戴夫·艾格斯

　　The first sentence of Michiko Kakutani’s review in 2000 says it all: "Dave Eggers’s new book, ‘A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,’ is part autobiography, part postmodern collage, a novelistic ‘memoir-y kind of thing’ that tells the sad, awful, tragic story of how the author’s mother and father died within weeks of each other and how he became a surrogate parent to his 8-year-old brother."角谷美智子在2000年的书评里写的第一句话就是：戴夫·艾格斯的新书，《一个惊人天才的伤心之作》，是半自传，半后现代的拼贴，一本小说式的“回忆录式的书”告诉了我们一个悲伤又可怕的悲剧故事，他的爸妈是如何在数周内相续死去，他是如何变成他只有8岁的弟弟的代理父母。

　　"And tells it with such style and hyperventilated, self-conscious energy, such coy, Letter manesque shtick and such genuine, heartfelt emotion, that the story is at once funny, tender, annoying and, yes, heartbreaking — an epic, in the end, not of woe, though there’s plenty of that too, but an epic about family and how families fracture and fragment and somehow, through all the tumult and upset, manage to endure."用这样的一种风格，急速的换气，自我意识的能量，是如此的羞涩，妙语连珠又如此的天才，真挚的情感，这个故事同时那么有趣，温柔，恼人的，是的，让人心碎-史诗般的，不是因为痛苦，尽管书里有很多描写，但是是一部有关家庭的史诗，一个家庭是如何的支离破碎的，而且在某种程度上，尽管有这些动荡和不安，主人公都熬过去了。”

　　Persepolis(2003)

　　波斯波利斯

　　作者 玛嘉·莎塔碧

　　In “Persepolis,” Marjane Satrapi recounts growing up in Iran in a family of leftists during the time of the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war.在“波斯波利斯”这本书里，（又名：我在伊朗长大）玛嘉·莎塔碧详述了一个在伊朗伊拉克战争期间和伊斯兰革命期间，一个伊朗左派的家庭的故事。

　　Satrapi told The Believer in 2006 that she wants her books to counteract black-and-white views of the world.莎塔碧在2006年告诉粉丝，她希望她的书能够消灭这个世界非黑即白观点。

　　“I’m not a moral lesson giver,” she said. “It’s not for me to say what is right or wrong. I describe situations as honestly as possible. The way I saw it. That’s why I use my own life as material. I have seen these things myself, and now I’m telling it to you. Because the world is not about Batman and Robin fighting the Joker; things are more complicated than that.”“我并不是道德的说教者，”她说，“这个世界并不是由我来判断是与非。我尽量真实的描述现状。用我所看到的方式。这就是我取材于我真实生活的原因。我亲眼看到过这些事情，现在我来告诉你们。因为这个世界并不是蝙蝠侠与罗宾大战小丑，真实的情况要远比这个复杂的多。

　　Fun Home(2006)

　　喜乐园

　　作者 埃里森·柏克达

　　The source of the Tony Award-winning musical, “Fun Home” is Alison Bechdel’s moving graphic memoir about her relationship with her father.获得托尼奖的那部音乐剧就是取材于埃里森.柏克达的自传式漫画《喜乐园》，在这本书里，她写了自己和父亲的关系。

　　The story of Bechdel’s own realization that she is a lesbian is told in tandem with the story of her father, a small-town funeral director, and his repressed homosexuality.书中写到，柏克达自己的真实情况就是，她是一个女同性恋，而他父亲作为一个小镇上的丧葬承办人也有着非常压抑的同性恋情。

　　In The New York Times Book Review, Sean Wilsey wrote: “It is a pioneering work, pushing two genres (comics and memoir) in multiple new directions, with panels that combine the detail and technical proficiency of R. Crumb with a seriousness, emotional complexity and innovation completely its own.”纽约书评人，肖恩·威尔西说：“这是一个创意之举，把2种流派（漫画和自传）以多种新的方法结合在了一起，把严肃，复杂的情感，用画板结合了细节和R.Crumb的熟练的技巧，并且完全用自己新创的方式表达了出来。

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