英国《卫报》刊载麦家《解密》书评:Decoded by Mai Jia – review

来源:CCTSS

作者:

2021-08-16

编者按:

麦家是中国当代著名作家,其作品已经被译为30多个语种,在海外产生了广泛的影响,是中国当代最具世界影响力的作家之一。鉴于麦家在中国当代文学海外传播过程中产生的实际影响和示范效应,中国文化译研网(CCTSS)特就麦家作品海外传播情况的反馈做一系统梳理,北京语言大学徐宝锋教授将之概括为中国文学“走出去”的“麦家模式”,希望“麦家模式”能成为中国当代文学作品“走出去”的重要借鉴与参考。中国文化译研网现推出国内外媒体关于麦家及其作品的系列专访与报道,对中国文学“走出去”的“麦家模式”进行详细读解,此篇为专题报道第二篇。

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图片说明:麦家作品《解密》经英美顶级出版社推出之后,被翻译成英语、法语、西班牙语、德语、意大利语等30多种语言。

时间:2014 年 2 月 2 日

媒体:UK《The Guardian》/英国《卫报》刊载书评

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图片说明:英国《卫报》刊载关于麦家《解密》相关书评。

原文链接为:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/02/decoded-mai-jia-review-thriller 


题目:Decoded by Mai Jia-review 

Review:Despite Mai Jia’s meandering narrative style, his debut spy novel will leave you wanting more.

关键语:不出意外,当你看完《解密》,一定会让你想阅读更多麦家的作品。

英文原文:

Mai Jia is described in the publisher's blurb of this absorbing and unusual book as "the most popular writer in the world that you've never heard of". Now, with the translation of his 2005 debut being published in the west, English-language speakers will have a chance to see why Mai deserves this reputation.

It's misleading to expect this novel to be a tense codebreaking thriller in the mould of, say, Robert Harris's Enigma. Instead, it's a much more subtle and psychologically focused read that prefers to look askance at 20th-century Chinese history, and offers wry comparisons with present-day China. It begins somewhat along the lines of Patrick Süskind's Perfume, with a strange young man, Rong Jinzhen, who has been rejected by society, finds himself a similarly unconventional mentor and then, after he has developed his skill (here, a near uncanny understanding of advanced mathematics), is recruited by a shadowy intelligence officer known as Zheng the Gimp (on account of his pronounced limp) to crack two of Country X's most advanced codes, the ostensibly indecipherable Purple and the even more mysterious Black. However, as Jinzhen becomes drawn into a strange, anonymous and shadowy world of espionage, he finds his dormant mental issues becoming more of a problem for him, and the novel takes on a different hue altogether.

Mai's style of storytelling, involving lengthy and sometimes apparently irrelevant portions of first-person narration from other characters in the form of diaries or interviews, can be taxing at times, but nonetheless the central story is a gripping one, offering a protagonist who is never exactly sympathetic but whose struggles in service of an unknown and unknowable goal seem all too clearly an echo of what his fellow countrymen faced during the postwar era. If nothing else, it leaves you eager to read more of his work.

责任编辑:张潇尹