徜徉台灣地景文學

徜徉台灣地景文學

眺望世界的文化窗景

文學是國家風景的一扇窗，透過彼得．梅爾的《山居歲月》，我們認識了南法普羅旺斯小鎮上的市井日常。閱讀維卡斯．史瓦盧普的小說《Q&A》，描繪印度社會底層人民的生活圖像。一字一字地啃讀完《百年孤寂》，寄寓拉丁美洲歷史社會的縮影；甚或是J.K.羅琳的《哈利波特》，寫的雖是魔法世界，卻在字裡行間刻畫英國人個性自恃、古怪和冷冷的幽默感。

Journeys through Literary Landscapes:

Taiwan’s Local Stories Go Global

Literature opens windows into a country’s soul.

Through Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence, we imagine life in the countryside of southeastern France. Digesting Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, we find ourselves untangling an allegory of Latin American history and social realities. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series conjures up a magical world, but between the lines we catch glimpses of British confidence, eccentricity, and deadpan humor.

台灣成為國際的關鍵字

2016年，由美國重量級的文學出版社Knopf出版的《綠島》，是華裔作家楊小娜以英語寫成，以台灣二二八事件為基底的創作，描述事件的倖存者如何走過白色恐怖的傷痛，藉此帶出台灣從日治至今日追求自由與民主的掙扎與命運。此書在美國的台裔社群和文壇獲得好評，全球最大出版商企鵝藍燈書屋甚至將其選為One World, One Book 的全球推薦書。

Taiwan in the global spotlight

Shawna Yang Ryan is an American writer of Taiwanese heritage. Her widely acclaimed English-language novel Green Island (2016), based on the February 28 Incident of 1947, tells how survivors of the violently suppressed protests dealt with their trauma through the subsequent decades under martial law. By revisiting this cataclysmic period of history, Ryan illuminates Taiwan’s persistent quest for freedom and democracy since the Japanese colonial era. Green Island was selected for Penguin Random House’s One World, One Book program.

2019年由鏡文學出版的《鬼地方》是旅德作家陳思宏以家鄉彰化永靖為本的小說，以多人共敘的筆法，淋漓盡致地處理家族創傷、小鎮秘密和時代枷鎖等主題。文本裡的「氣口」（台語），和那充滿陳思宏個人風格的遣詞用字，雖然不好翻譯，但是由翻譯過吳明益《複眼人》、《單車失竊記》，長年在台灣、香港任教的加拿大籍石岱崙（Darryl Sterk）操刀，文字中的台味道地且藏有驚喜。

Ghost Town (2019), by German-based Taiwanese writer Kevin Chen, is set in Yongjing, Changhua County, where Chen grew up. Adopting multiple narrative voices, it probes the minutiae of family traumas, small-town secrets, and the shackles of the times. Chen’s narrative style exudes idiosyncrasy at ­every turn and is difficult to reproduce in translation. Canadian translator Darryl Sterk, who also translated Wu Ming-yi’s The Man with the Compound Eyes and The Stolen Bicycle, has preserved the authentically Taiwanese flavor of Chen’s text, forging a literary language full of pleasant surprises.

版權經紀人譚光磊以《鬼地方》類比電影導演大衛．林區的電視影集《雙峰》，向國際版權人推薦，旋即引起迴響。在疫情期間，談成了國際英文版，是陳思宏第一本外譯的作品，由義大利暨英國獨立出版社Europa Editions取得，至今更售出希臘文、波蘭文、泰文、韓文、日文、義大利文、越南文、芬蘭文、德文、法文及烏克蘭文共計12種語文版權。2022年登上美國《紐約時報》秋季書單，入選美國《圖書館雜誌》2022年世界文學年度十大好書，2023年登上法國《世界報》（Le Monde）文學評論專刊，打開了國際讀者對台灣的認識。

 Taiwanese literary agent Gray Tan pitched Ghost Town to international rights managers by comparing it to Mark Frost and David Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks. The book immediately attracted global attention. World English rights were sold during the Covid-19 pandemic, followed by 11 other languages. Successfully bringing Taiwan to the wider world, Chen’s novel was a New York Times Editors’ Choice in January 2023, and was reviewed in Le Monde in September 2023.

1. JK・羅琳的《哈利波特》，寫的雖是魔法世界，卻在字裡行間刻畫英國人個性自恃、古怪和冷冷的幽默感。
   K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series conjures up a magical world, but reading between the lines, we catch a glimpse of British confidence, eccentricity, and deadpan humor.

• deadpan 毫無表情的；不動聲色
  He always keeps a deadpan face when describing their demonic foes.

1. 楊小娜作足深度的功課，字裡行間填充了時代的細節，厚描出時代的台灣風景。
   Ryan’s meticulous research has endowed her novel with a fabulously rich texture, showing readers the highways and byways of Taiwanese history.

• the highways and byways 大街小巷
  My father and mother would hunt the highways and byways of Leicestershire for a good pork pie with that particularly rich, crispy crust.

1. 「島嶼的故事，因為自由，因為奔放，就是全世界的故事。」借用了陳思宏臉書上的字句，因為說得太好了。
   Chen’s words on his Facebook page could not be more apposite: “The stories of this island—because they are free, and because they are exuberant—are stories that belong to the world.”
   
   
   apposite  adj.適當的，貼切的
   There is one apposite text which may be worth a closer look.

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