讀遍世界:196個國家 196本書

Writer Ann Morgan set herself a challenge – to read a book from every country in the world in one year. She describes the experience and what she learned.

作家安·摩根決定給自己一個挑戰——在一年時間裏從世界所有國家的文學作品中各選一本書來閱讀。 她講述了自己的經歷及體會。

I used to think of myself as a fairly cosmopolitan sort of person, but my bookshelves told a different story. Apart from a few Indian novels and the odd Australian and South African book, my literature collection consisted of British and American titles. Worse still, I hardly ever tackled anything in translation. My reading was confined to stories by English-speaking authors.

我曾認爲自己是一個“海納百川”的人，但我書架裏的書卻清楚地表明這並非事實。 除了一些印度小說以及澳大利亞和南非的古怪離奇的書以外，我的藏書主要是英國及美國文學。更糟糕的是，我從沒有接觸過任何小說譯本。我讀的書大多由以英語爲母語的作家寫就。

So, at the start of 2012, I set myself the challenge of trying to read a book from every country (well, all 195 UN-recognised states plus former UN member Taiwan) in a year to find out what I was missing.

於是，2012年伊始，我決定給自己一個挑戰---在一年內讀玩196本分別來自世界每一個國家和地區的書（這裏是指聯合國承認的195個國家以及一個前聯合國成員臺灣），看看我在以往的閱讀中錯過了什麼。

With no idea how to go about this beyond a sneaking suspicion that I was unlikely to find publications from nearly 200 nations on the shelves of my local bookshop, I decided to ask the planet’s readers for help. I created a blog called A Year of Reading the World and put out an appeal for suggestions of titles that I could read in English.

開始時我感到無從下手，因爲我暗暗懷疑是否能在當地書店裏找到來自將近200多個國家的書，於是決定向世界各地的讀者尋求幫助。我開了一個名叫“一年讀世界”的博客，請大家向我推薦一些我可以用英語閱讀的文章。

The response was amazing. Before I knew it, people all over the planet were getting in touch with ideas and offers of help. Some posted me books from their home countries. Others did hours of research on my behalf. In addition, several writers, like Turkmenistan’s Ak Welsapar and Panama’s Juan David Morgan, sent me unpublished translations of their novels, giving me a rare opportunity to read works otherwise unavailable to the 62% of Brits who only speak English. Even with such an extraordinary team of bibliophiles behind me, however, sourcing books was no easy task. For a start, with translations making up only around 4.5 per cent of literary works published in the UK and Ireland, getting English versions of stories was tricky.

我的要求得到了意想不到的反響。很快地，來自世界不同地區的人都在試圖給我建議、提供幫助。有的人直接在帖子裏附上來自他們的國家的書，有的人花費了幾小時的時間來幫我做調查。除此之外，一些作家更是給我發送了他們未出版的小說譯本，比如土庫曼斯坦的阿克?韋爾斯帕和巴拿馬的胡安?大衛?摩根。這給我了一個難得的機會，因爲這些書對於佔總人口62%的只會說英語的英國人來說本是讀不到的。即便有愛書人組成一支特別的隊伍支持我，尋找書源也絕不是一件簡單的事。在英國和愛爾蘭，出版的文學作品中只有4.5%的是譯本，尋找一些故事的英文版是件棘手的事。

Small states

較小的國家和地區

This was particularly true for francophone and lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) African countries. There’s precious little on offer for states such as the Comoros, Madagascar, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique – I had to rely on unpublished manuscripts for several of these. And when it came to the tiny island nation of Sao Tome & Principe, I would have been stuck without a team of volunteers in Europe and the US who translated a book of short stories by Santomean writer Olinda Beja just so that I could have something to read.

尤其是對於使用法語以及葡語的非洲國家來說，只有找到很少、很寶貴的一部分書能夠被找到，比如科摩羅、馬達加斯加、幾內亞-比紹以及莫桑比克。對其中的一些國家，我不得不依賴於尚未出版的手稿。而對於聖多美及普林西比民主共和國這個小小的島國，我有幸得到了一支來自歐美的志願者團隊幫助纔有書可讀，他們翻譯了聖多美和普林西比作家奧林達?倍加短片小說。沒有他們，我的讀書計劃難以進行下去。

Then there were places where stories are rarely written down. If you’re after a good yarn in the Marshall Islands, for example, you’re more likely to go and ask the local iroij’s (chief’s) permission to hear one of the local storytellers than you are to pick up a book. Similarly, in Niger, legends have traditionally been the preserve of griots (expert narrators-cum-musicians trained in the nation’s lore from around the age of seven). Written versions of their fascinating performances are few and far between – and can only ever capture a small part of the experience of listening for yourself.

一些地區很少用文字記錄他們的故事。比如在馬紹爾羣島，當你在想要聽一個好故事的時候，你可能會去請求埃羅（首領）准許，然後去聽一個當地說書人講故事，而不是拿起一本書來閱讀。類似地，在尼日爾，傳說通常都專屬於格里奧（專門的故事敘述者及音樂家，7歲開始接受本國神話傳說方面的訓練）。他們精彩表演的書面版本少之又少，並且即便你親耳聆聽，也只能捕獲到少許。

If that wasn’t enough, politics threw me the odd curveball too. The foundation of South Sudan on 9 July 2011 – although a joyful event for its citizens, who had lived through decades of civil war to get there – posed something of a challenge. Lacking roads, hospitals, schools or basic infrastructure, the six-month-old country seemed unlikely to have published any books since its creation. If it hadn’t been for a local contact putting me in touch with writer Julia Duany, who penned me a bespoke short story, I might have had to catch a plane to Juba and try to get someone to tell me a tale face to face.

如果這還不夠，政治因素更是給我出了個大難題。2011年7月9日南蘇丹的建立，對於經歷了數十年內戰的國民來說可能是一件值的歡慶的事，某種意義上說卻給我帶來了一個挑戰。沒有公路、醫院、學校或其它基礎設施，這個六個月大的國家自建立以來便沒有出版過任何的書。如果不是一個當地人幫助我聯繫上了作家茱莉亞?端妮，請她爲我寫下一個故事，我可能不得不飛到朱巴去找人面對面給我講述一個故事。

All in all, tracking down stories like these took as much time as the reading and blogging. It was a tall order to fit it all in around work and many were the nights when I sat bleary-eyed into the small hours to make sure I stuck to my target of reading one book every 1.87 days.

總而言之，如此追索這些故事可能花費了和我看書、寫博客差不多的時間。有時候很難找時間來完成所有的任務。有多少個夜晚我都是睡眼朦朧地看到凌晨，以確保達到平均每1.87天一本書的目標。

Head space

頭腦空間

But the effort was worth it. As I made my way through the planet’s literary landscapes, extraordinary things started to happen. Far from simply armchair travelling, I found I was inhabiting the mental space of the storytellers. In the company of Bhutanese writer Kunzang Choden, I wasn’t simply visiting exotic temples, but seeing them as a local Buddhist would. Transported by the imagination of Galsan Tschinag, I wandered through the preoccupations of a shepherd boy in Mongolia’s Altai Mountains. With Nu Nu Yi as my guide, I experienced a religious festival in Myanmar from a transgender medium’s perspective.

然而所有的努力都是值得的。當我走過世界文學不同的地理風貌，不同尋常的事發生了。和那些坐在扶手椅上的旅行不同，我發現自己入住了故事講述者們的心理世界。 在不丹作家昆贊?秋殿的陪伴下，我不僅僅是簡單地參觀了別具異域風情的寺廟，而是以一個當地佛教徒的身份進行了拜訪。乘着格爾森?契那歌德想像的翅膀，我遊走在蒙古阿爾泰山牧童的思想裏。以努努依爲嚮導，我從一個變性人的視角體驗了緬甸的宗教盛典。

In the hands of gifted writers, I discovered, bookpacking offered something a physical traveller could hope to experience only rarely: it took me inside the thoughts of individuals living far away and showed me the world through their eyes. More powerful than a thousand news reports, these stories not only opened my mind to the nuts and bolts of life in other places, but opened my heart to the way people there might feel.

在這些天才作家掌握中，我發現，書帶給了我一種外出旅行少有的經歷：它把我帶入了那些遠方人們的思想當中，並且給我展示他們的雙眼所觀察到的世界。比成千上萬新聞報道更有感染力的是，這些故事不僅讓我看到了其它地區生活的點點滴滴，也讓我與當地人感同身受。

And that in turn changed my thinking. Through reading the stories shared with me by bookish strangers around the globe, I realised I was not an isolated person, but part of a network that stretched all over the planet.

而這反過來改變了我原有的想法。通過讀那些世界各地愛書人給我分享的書籍，我意識到我並不是一個孤立的人，而是屬於一個覆蓋全球的網絡的一部分。

One by one, the country names on the list that had begun as an intellectual exercise at the start of the year transformed into vital, vibrant places filled with laughter, love, anger, hope and fear. Lands that had once seemed exotic and remote became close and familiar to me – places I could identify with. At its best, I learned, fiction makes the world real.

漸漸地，年初被當成智力訓練而列下的國名，變成一個個充滿歡笑、愛、憤怒、希望和恐懼的地方，活靈活現、意義非凡。曾經被我認爲奇異和遙遠的地方變得接近和熟悉---成了一個個我能清晰辨別的地方。最難能可貴的是，我學到：小說讓世界變得真實。