美国当代杂志家

美国当代杂志家

　　美国当代作家

　　《时代》周刊上月出炉的世界一百名最有影响的人物名单中，有三名当代美国作家入选，他们是 Khaled Hosseini，Elizabeth Gilbert 和 Stephenie Meyer。
　　Khaled Hosseini 出生在阿富汗，其父是一名阿富汗外交官。在苏军占领阿富汗期间，Hosseini 和他的父亲逃离了他们的祖国，辗转移民到美国，他的成名作，The Kite Runner，就是根据他早年的经历写成的自传体小说。Khaled Hosseini 是一位生活在旧金山的医生，从事业余写作，迄今为止共出版了两本书（The Kite Runner 和 A Thousand Splendid Suns)，都是 New York Times 上的畅销书。尤其是 The Kite Runner 一书，被好莱坞拍成了电影，并译成许多文字，影响了世界各地成千上万的人。正像美国总统夫人 Laura Bush 在下面的介绍中所说的，“很少有人写第一本小说就获得成功。更没有几个人能够用自己的写作改变世界。而43岁的 Khaled Hosseini 这两点都做到了。”

　　Khaled Hosseini
　　By Laura Bush

　　Not many people write successful first novels. Still fewer are able to change the world with their writing. Khaled Hosseini, 43, has done both. His 2003 novel, The Kite Runner, introduced readers around the world to the people of Afghanistan. Four years later, he published A Thousand Splendid Suns—and helped his audience see the faces of the women under the burqas.

　　Hosseini's stories are set against the backdrop of Afghanistan's tumultuous history. His complex portrayal of human nature, however, transcends geographic boundaries. In more than 40 languages, readers everywhere can recognize the best and worst in humanity in his characters—often in the same person.

　　In America, Hosseini's writing has invited many to look beyond the post-9/11 stereotypes about his birth country. We have grown to see Afghanistan as a land of men and women, each with their own hopes and longings for love.

　　The U.S. office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recognized The Kite Runner's impact by naming Hosseini the 2006 Humanitarian of the Year. Since then, his work as a goodwill envoy has taken him to the homes of returning Afghan refugees and to camps in eastern Chad.

　　Hosseini has said his novels intertwine the "intimate and personal" with the "broad and historical." As President Bush and I have encountered him through his writing and his work, we've discovered that his life does much the same.

　　Bush, an activist on behalf of Afghan women, is First Lady of the U.S.

　　Elizabeth Gilbert 曾经是颇有名气的杂志专栏作家，她的 Pilgrims 一书曾获 PEN/Hemingway Award。但真正让她大红大紫的是2006年出版的 Eat，Pray，Love。在这本书中，Gilbert 叙述了她去意大利，印度和印度尼西亚的游历，通过游记的形式描述了她心路历程的嬗变和升华，对生命的价值和生活的意义做了深刻的探索。Gilbert 选择这三个都是依英文字母 “I” 开头的国家，代表了她情感心智厉练的不同阶段和方面：去意大利是为了享受那里的语言，美食和醇酒，满足感官上的愉悦，更多的是形而下的追求；在印度，通过练习瑜珈和体验禁欲生活，作形而上的反省，是为了灵魂的洗礼；而在印尼的巴厘岛，也是她文化苦旅的最后一站，她终于找到了自己的真爱和友谊，找到了沟通形而上和形而下的和谐所在，达到了身与心的平衡。该书是 New York Times 的最佳畅销书，获 New York Times Notable Book 称号，并被译成20多种语言。据说好莱坞已经将 Eat，Pray，Love 一书的版权买下，准备拍成电影，由 Julie Roberts 主演。但是，对于一本侧重描述心灵成长的故事，如何把它通过电影的蒙太奇语言在银幕上表达出来，应该是一个不小的挑战。

　　Elizabeth Gilbert
　　By John Hodgman

　　If you are the person in America who has not yet read Eat Pray Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, this is a beautiful book about Liz's journey around the world after her divorce. It has touched countless lives, including Oprah Winfrey's, and I was glad of this, because I am Liz's friend. But when I saw her on Oprah, I was also angry: "What about her beautiful short stories?" I yelled at the TV. "Talk about those, Liz!" But she didn't. Liz just smiled radiantly and kept on changing lives.

　　Because we are friends, I get to call her "Liz" Gilbert. In fact, I sometimes don't even say "Gilbert." Just "Gilb." We met when we appeared in The Paris Review's "New Writers" issue in 1996. But she wasn't new. As a writer, she was already accomplished, funny and wise beyond her years. As a person, doubly so.

　　When my mother was dying, I asked Liz if she believed in an afterlife. Of everyone I knew, I figured Liz, 38, was probably the only one who had really thought it through. The answer she offered is still a great comfort to me, though I won't reveal it here. It's private; plus, I don't want to ruin sales of my next book, Liz Gilbert's Answer Regarding the Afterlife. I know a moneymaker when I hear one.

　　So I really was not surprised when I heard she would be on Oprah. It's about time, I thought. But when I saw her there, I was angry and jealous. I suddenly understood how many people now knew my friend Liz, and how those of us who love her would now have to share her. I can accept that now. That is good. But it won't stop me from telling you that my friend Liz wrote the best short story I have ever read. It's in Issue 141 of The Paris Review, and it will make you gasp.

　　Hodgman's actual next book is More Information Than You Require

　　Stephenie Meyer 可算是在 Harry Potter 的作者 J. K. Rowling 之后的另一位（坐家）女奇人。她是住在 Phoenix 的一位家庭主妇，丈夫工作，她在家里照顾三个孩子，此前从未从事过写作。据 Stephenie Meyer 讲，有一天她做了一个梦，梦见一个女孩和一个俊美的吸血鬼在树林里幽会。第二天，她把这个梦悄悄的记了下来，从此一发而不可收拾，只用了不到半年的时间就完成了小说，Twilight。之后又出版了 New Moon 和 Eclipse。 Twilight 系列荣膺 New York Times，Publisher Weekly 和 Amazon 最佳畅销书称号，并在世界各地30多个国家和地区发行，成为 Harry Potter 之后青少年读者的阅读新宠。好莱坞根据该书拍摄的电影，也将于今年年底发行。除了吸血鬼题材的诡异，再加上浪漫，悬疑等畅销书要素外，Twilight 系列最大特点是浪漫而不诉诸感官欲望，这在情欲横流甚至有人张扬“用下半身写作”的今天，实在是一件让健康的心智感到欣慰的事情。另外，通过写吸血鬼和人之间的爱情恩怨来宣示浪漫情感的真谛，也算是浪漫小说的一种极致了。

　　Stephenie Meyer
　　By Orson Scott Card

　　Nobody was looking for Twilight. A Mormon housewife writes a young-adult novel about a love affair between a teenage girl and a vampire?

　　Is this Anne Rice lite? Not in the eyes of the teenagers—and their mothers—who have embraced the book.

　　But Stephenie Meyer's Twilight does raise some questions, and I've asked them. "You really want your teenage daughter to live inside the story of a girl who lies to her parents, invites a boy to sleep in her bed and trusts him not to take advantage of her?"

　　These women look at me as if I'm insane. "But she can trust him. He really loves her. He's...perfect."

　　In an era when much of the romance genre has been given over to soft porn, and dark fantasy is peopled with one-dimensional characters bent on grim violence, many readers have become hungry for pure romantic fantasy—lots of sexual tension, but as decorous as Jane Austen.

　　Meyer, 34, did not calculatedly reach for that audience. Instead, she wrote the story she believed in and cared about. She writes with luminous clarity, never standing between the reader and the dream they share. She's the real thing. Still, who'd have thought it? Today Mr. Darcy is a vampire.

欧美当代作家作品

　　第一本
　　《我的名字叫红》 2006年诺贝尔文学奖获得者 土耳其作家 奥尔罕·帕穆克的一本力作，该书获得了包括法国文学奖、意大利格林扎纳·卡佛文学奖和都柏林文学奖在内的欧洲三大文学奖项。

　　内容介绍：1590年末的伊斯坦布尔，国王苏丹秘密委制一本伟大的书籍，颂扬他的生活与帝国。四位当朝最优秀的细密画家齐聚京城，分工合作，精心绘制这本旷世之作。此时离家12年的青年黑终于回到他的故乡——伊斯坦布尔，迎接他归来的除了爱情，还有接踵而来的谋杀案……
　　一位细密画家失踪了，随即被发现死于深井中，奉命为苏丹绘制抄本的长者也惨遭杀害。遇害的画家究竟是死于画师间的夙仇、爱情的纠葛、还是与苏丹的这次秘密委托有关？苏丹要求宫廷绘画大师奥斯曼和青年黑在三天内查出结果，而线索，很可能……就藏在书中未完成的图画某处。
　　究竟谁是凶手？动机是什么？作者让相关人士全部都现身说法了：一只狗、一棵树、一枚金币、红色，两具尸体及死亡，甚至凶手全都站出来了。他们仿若有生命般，靠着自己的经历与观察，仔细地告诉我们每一条蛛丝马迹。

　　第二本
　　《追风筝的人》 ，作者卡勒德·胡赛尼，这是他的第一本书，虽然没有获得你上面列举的各个奖项中的任何一项，但是却广受好评，好像是06年还是07年在美国各大畅销书榜都名列前茅。故事情节震撼感人，尤其当我读到最后那一句“For you,a thousand times over”的时候，几乎潸然泪下！

　　第三本
　　《偷书贼》，作者马克斯·苏萨克，同样也没有获得你上面列举的各个奖项中的任何一项，但是百度上吹嘘说跟《安妮日记》一样感人，以为我没有看过《安妮日记》，所以暂不评论。写作的角度很奇怪，是透过死神与"偷书贼"莉赛尔的数次碰面来展开的。

　　第四本
　　《不能承受的生命之轻》或者《生命中不能承受之轻》（前者是最新译著，后者是之前译著），米兰·昆德拉最负盛名的作品，《纽约时报》曾评论该作是20世纪最重要的经典之作。
　　看看这里的评论
　　你会对这书有一个直观的认识

　　第五本
　　《芒果街上的小屋》 好清新的文字，这是我最喜欢的一本小书了
　　之所以说他是一本小书，因为我敢保证你只要花上1个小时就能把它的中英文版看完。
　　极力推荐你一定要看！！

　　另外，像《巴别塔之犬》《麦田里的守望者》《时间旅行者的妻子》《百年孤独》《不存在的女儿》《大象的眼泪》《心是孤独的猎手》《荆棘鸟》等等这些要么是红极一时，影响很大的著作，要么是水准很高，值得好好品味的著作，要么是获过N多大奖，在中国拥有无数书迷的著作。

　　这一些都是很值得一读的，向我之前刚读完的《不存在的女儿》，真的很棒，尤其是作者在环境描写上下的功夫。

　　最后，你也是一个书迷，而且应该还是一个外国文学的书迷吧
　　那么我推荐你到这里 成为一个豆瓣吧
　　这里真的很好，切忌在搜书的时候，不要忘记要看书评，看看那些铁杆书迷的思想。

　　嗬！不用谢，因为我以为是个书迷。

罗迦·费·因格简介

罗迦·费·因格（Roger von Oech，一般译作“罗杰·冯·欧克”），1948年生，美国实业家、学者、创造家。罗迦·费·因格是「创意思考顾问公司」的创立人与总裁。「创意思考顾问公司」位于加州，专门提供激发创意与革新的方法。他为全球各大企业提供演讲与专业课程，这些公司包括可口可乐、奇异公司、迪士尼、英特尔、MTV、微软公司、美国太空总署、苹果电脑、花旗集团与美国奥运协会。他之前写作过两本创意思考的书籍：《当头棒喝》、《踢醒沉睡之心》和议论文《事物的正确答案不止一个》，并推出广受欢迎的《创意大惊奇》卡片书。他与妻子及孩子住在加州亚瑟顿城。