《紐約時報》十大好書
Asymmetry
《不對稱》
By Lisa Halliday
麗薩·哈利德著
In “Asymmetry,” two seemingly unrelated sections are connected by a shocking coda. The first, “Folly,” is the story of a love affair. It narrates the relationship between Alice, a book editor and writer in her mid-20s, and Ezra Blazer, a geriatric novelist. The second section — “Madness” — belongs to Amar Jaafari, an Iraqi-American e-c-o-n-o-m-i-st who is being detained at Heathrow.
在《不對稱》這部作品中，兩個似乎毫不相關的故事被一個令人震驚的結局連接到了一起。第一部《愚蠢》講述了一個愛情故事，它講述了一名20幾歲的書籍編輯兼作者愛麗絲與一位年邁的小說家以斯拉·佈雷澤之間的愛情故事。 第二部《瘋狂》則講述了一位被扣留在希思羅的伊拉克裔美國籍經濟學家阿瑪爾·加法裏的故事。
Halliday’s prose is clean and lean, almost reportorial in the style of W.G. Sebald. This is a first novel that reads like the work of an author who has published many books over many years, and it manages to be a novel of ideas and a politically engaged work of metafiction.
哈利德的這部散文幾乎是以溫弗裏德·格奧爾格·塞巴爾德的風格寫下了一篇報道性作品，行文簡潔又精練。這是該作者的第一部小說，但它讀起來就像一位已在多年裏出版過許多書籍的作家的作品。作者努力把它塑造成一部有思想的小說，以及一部融入了政治元素的元虛構作品。
The Great Believers
《偉大的信徒》
By Rebecca Makkai
麗貝卡·瑪凱著
Set in the Chicago of the mid-80s and Paris at the time of the 2015 terrorist attacks, Makkai’s deeply affecting novel uses the AIDS epidemic and a mother’s search for her estranged daughter to explore the effects of senseless loss and our efforts to overcome it.
瑪凱這部感人至深的小說的背景設定在80年代中期的芝加哥以及2015年遭受恐怖襲擊之時的巴黎，她利用艾滋病的盛行以及一位母親尋找她那久未聯繫的女兒的故事來探討無意識失去的影響以及爲了克服這種結果我們所付出的努力。
Her portrait of a group of friends, most of them gay men, conveys the terrors and tragedies of the epidemic’s early years and follows its repercussions over decades. Empathetic without being sentimental, her novel amply earned its place among the contenders for the Booker Prize and the National Book Award.
她刻畫了一羣死黨，他們多數都是男同性戀者，她通過這部作品講述了傳染病傳播早期的恐怖和悲慘，以及其幾十年來的影響。她的小說並沒有渲染感情但卻能令人感同身受，而且足以在英國布克文學獎和美國國家圖書獎的衆多競爭者中爲自己贏得一席之地。
The Perfect Nanny
《完美保姆》
By Leila Slimani
莉拉·斯利馬尼著
We know from the outset of this unnerving cautionary tale that a beloved nanny has murdered the two children in her care; but what’s even more remarkable about this unconventional thriller is the author’s intimate analysis of the special relationship between a mother and the person she hires to care for her offspring. In this mesmerizingly twisted novel, only one thing is clear: Loneliness can drive you crazy.
我們從這個令人緊張不安的警戒故事的開端得知，一位深受喜愛的保姆殺害了她照顧的兩個孩子。但這部不落俗套的懸疑小說更值得關注的部分是作者對這位母親以及她僱來照顧她的孩子的這個人之間的特殊關係的細緻分析。在這部令人着迷的偏執小說中，唯一明確的一點就是：孤獨會把人逼瘋。
There There
《好啦好啦》
By Tommy Orange
湯米·奧蘭治著
Orange’s debut is an ambitious meditation on identity and its broken alternatives, on myth filtered through the lens of time and poverty and urban life.
奧蘭治的處女作是對身份和其破損的替代品的一次有野心的冥想，也是對通過時間、貧窮和城市生活鏡頭過濾的虛構故事的一次有抱負的沉思。
Its many short chapters are told through a loosely connected group of Native Americans living in Oakland, Calif., as they travel to a powwow.
其許多短章節講述了生活在加利福尼亞州奧克蘭市的一羣組織鬆散的美國原住民前去舉行預祝狂歡的故事。
Washington Black
《華盛頓黑人》
By Esi Edugyan
易斯·艾度格言著
This transcendent work of empathy and imagination, the 2018 winner of Canada’s prestigious Giller Prize, opens on a sugar plantation in British Barbados in the waning days of slavery.
這部能令人產生共鳴且充滿想象力的傑出作品贏得了2018年加拿大頗有聲望的吉勒文學獎，其背景設定在廢奴時期英屬巴巴多斯的一片蔗糖種植園。
It is a world in which a white slave master’s brother and a young black slave can forge an indelible bond. Edugyan unfolds a wondrous tale of exploration and discovery.
它刻畫了一個白人奴隸主兄弟和一個年輕的黑人奴隸能建立起不可磨滅的紐帶的世界。艾度格言塑造了一個探索和發現的奇妙故事。
American Prison
《美國監獄》
By Shane Bauer
肖恩·鮑爾著
Bauer moved to rural Louisiana in 2014 to work undercover as a guard at the Winn Correctional Center, a privately run prison. He lasted four months before his deception was discovered, but that turned out to be more than sufficient to write a searing exposé, which earned him a National Magazine Award and an invitation to speak to officials in Washington about problems in for-profit prisons.
鮑爾2014年搬到了路易斯安那州的鄉下，在一個私營監獄韋恩懲教中心擔任臥底警衛。在他的謊言被識破之前，他在那裏擔任了四個月的警衛，但他收集到的素材已足夠他寫一篇尖刻的揭發性文章了，這篇文章也爲他贏得了美國國家雜誌獎，還使他受邀與華盛頓官員交流了以盈利爲目的的監獄的問題。
With this book, Bauer has expanded his article into a comprehensive analysis impossible to ignore. His book is a meticulous catalog of horrors, from the historical precursors to the rampant violence, neglect and incompetence that pervade a multibillion-dollar industry.
在這本書中，鮑爾擴寫了他的文章，詳細地分析了那些不容忽視的問題。他的作品是一部細緻的恐怖名錄，書中詳細講述了其歷史前身和遍佈這個數十億美元行業的猖獗的暴力、疏忽和不作爲。
Educated
《教養》
By Tara Westover
塔拉·韋斯特沃著
Westover’s extraordinary memoir is an act of courage and self-invention.
韋斯特沃這部非凡的自傳體現了她的勇氣和自我創造。
The youngest of seven children, she grew up in Idaho, in a survivalist family who lived so far off the grid that she lacked even a birth certificate and did not attend school until she went to college. At home, reading meant studying the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and much of her childhood was spent helping her mother and her father.
她在愛達荷的一個接受戶外求生培訓的家庭長大，她是家裏七個孩子中最年幼的一個，她的家庭與外界隔離，以至於她連出生證明都沒有，而且她在上大學之前也沒有上過學。在家裏，讀書就是學習聖經和魔門經，而她童年的多數時間都用來幫她的父母。
In recounting her upbringing and her triumph over it, Westover took great risks and alienated family members. The reward is a book that testifies to an irrepressible thirst to learn.
爲了講述她的家教和她的成就，韋斯特沃冒了很大的風險，而且還疏遠了家人。但她的回報就是一本證明了她的強烈學習渴望的作品。
Frederick Douglass
《弗雷德裏克·道格拉斯》
By David W. Blight
大衛·W·布萊特著
A monumental work about a monumental figure. Douglass wrote three autobiographies himself, describing his rise from slavery to a role as one of the greatest figures of the 19th century, but Blight’s work is fuller than any of those, relating both the public and private life in a way that Douglass either could not or would not undertake.
這是一部關於一個重要人物的鉅著。道格拉斯寫過三部自傳，講述了他從奴隸成長爲19世紀偉大人物之一的歷程，但布萊特的作品比他的三部自傳都要飽滿，他用道格拉斯不能或不會採取的方式講述了他的公衆生活和個人生活。
How to Change Your Mind
《如何改變你的想法》
By Michael Pollan
邁克爾·波倫著
Exploring the history and science of psychedelics, Pollan tells of the rise and fall of our societal interest in these drugs, which are now thought to have many benefits, helping with easing the terror of the terminally ill. The book hits its high point when he examines the mysticism and spirituality of the psychedelic experience.
波倫探討了致-幻-劑的歷史和科學原理，講述了社會對這些藥物的興趣的興衰，而如今人們認爲這些藥物有諸多益處，有助於緩解絕症病人的恐懼。當他檢測這種迷幻體驗的神祕和靈性的時候，這本書達到了高潮。
Small Fry
《小人物》
By Lisa Brennan-Jobs
麗薩·布倫南-喬布斯著
Brennan-Jobs grew up shuttling between two starkly different worlds: the bohemian, peripatetic world of her mother, an impoverished artist, and the luxurious world of her cruel and increasingly wealthy father, Steve Jobs.
布倫南-喬布斯在兩個完全不同的世界裏長大：她那位貧窮的藝術家母親所生活的那個漂泊的、需要到處遊走的世界以及她那位殘酷的、越來越富有的父親史蒂夫·喬布斯所生活的那個奢侈的世界。
Brennan-Jobs provides indelible portraits of both parents, recreating the fraught landscape of her childhood in Palo Alto through the careful accretion of exquisitely granular detail.
布倫南-喬布斯爲她的父母塑造了不可磨滅的形象，通過對微小細節的細緻刻畫重現了她童年時在帕洛阿爾託的不愉快的場景。
（翻譯：Dlacus）
