书名：A Pale View of Hills 远山淡影
难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数660L
作者：Kazuo Ishiguro
出版社名称：Vintage 
出版时间：1990
语种： 英文
ISBN：9780679722670
商品尺寸：13.1 x 1.3 x 20.3 cm
包装：平装
页数：192

A Pale View of Hills《远山淡影》是2017年诺贝尔文学奖得主石黑一雄在其28岁发表的处女作，获英国皇家文学会的温尼弗雷德·霍尔比奖（Winifred Holtby Prize）。小说描写居住在英国寡妇悦子，因长女的自杀而回想战后在长崎生活的往事。作品内容新颖，形式精巧。语言纯粹熨帖，手法简约轻淡；表面平静，内里波澜，暗写虚刻，却能力透纸背，意在言外，令人低回不已。

精彩书评：
“石黑一雄的小说，以其巨大的情感力量，发掘了隐藏在我们与世界联系的幻觉之下的深渊。”——瑞典学院

“一部精巧、令人出乎意料的简洁小说。人物异乎寻常的可信，作品的感伤和反讽意味的融合与平衡令人难忘。”——《纽约时报书评》

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novelThe Remains of the Day, here is the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. In a novel where past and present confuse, she relives scenes of Japan’s devastation in the wake of World War II.
Review
“An original and remarkable genius.”—TheNew York Times
“A macabre and faultlessly worked enigma.”—Sunday Times
“A delicate, ironic, elliptical novel. Its characters are remarkably convincing. But what one remembers is its balance, halfway between elegy and irony. ”—TheNew York Times Book Review

A Pale View of Hills《远山淡影》是石黑一雄技惊文坛的处女作，一部问世30年仍在不断重印的名作。小说通过一个移居英国的日本寡妇对故土、故人的回忆，讲述了战后长崎一对饱受磨难的母女渴望安定与新生，却始终走不出战乱带来的阴影与心魔，终以母女成功移民，而女儿自尽作为悲情结局。作品构思奇特，叙述者通篇的回忆是模糊而可疑的，直至全书终，叙述者才忘记了伪装，读者也证实了猜想：叙述者是利用回忆做掩护，编织了一个他人的故事，企图通过他人的面具来讲述自己的故事，以减轻罪恶感。
In his highly acclaimed debut, Kazuo Ishiguro tells the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter.
Retreating into the past, she finds herself reliving one particular hot summer night in Nagasaki, when she and her friends struggled to rebuild their lives after the war. But then as she recalls her strange friendship with Sachiko—a wealthy woman reduced to vagrancy—the memories take on a disturbing cast.

石黑一雄（Kazuo Ishiguro），日裔英国小说家，1954年生于日本长崎。1989年获得“布克奖”，与奈保尔、拉什迪并称“英国文坛移民三雄”。被英国皇室授勋为文学骑士，并获授法国艺术文学骑士勋章。
2017年，石黑一雄获得诺贝尔文学奖。瑞典学院给出的获奖理由为“石黑一雄的小说，以其巨大的情感力量，发掘了隐藏在我们与世界联系的幻觉之下的深渊。”
石黑一雄文体以细腻优美著称，几乎每部小说都被提名或得奖，其作品已被翻译成二十八种语言。
虽然拥有日本和英国双重的文化背景，但石黑一雄却是极为少数的、不专以移民或是国族认同作为小说题材的亚裔作家之一。他致力于写出一本对于生活在任何一个文化背景之下的人们，都能够产生意义的小说。于是，石黑一雄的每一本小说几乎都在开创一个新的格局，横跨了欧洲的贵族文化、现代中国、日本，乃至于1990年代晚期的英国生物科技实验，而屡屡给读者带来耳目一新的惊喜。
石黑一雄的出版作品如下：1982年《群山淡景》（A Pale View of Hills）， 获得“英国皇家学会”（Royal Society of Literature）温尼弗雷德．霍尔比奖（Winifred Holtby Prize）。1986年《浮世画家》（An Artist of the Floating World），获英国及爱尔兰图书协会颁发的“惠特布莱德”年度小说奖（Whitbread Book of the Year Award）和英国布克奖（Booker Prize）的提名。1989年《长日留痕》（The Remains of the Day），荣获英国布克奖，并荣登《出版家周刊》的畅销排行榜。1995年《无可慰藉》（The Unconsoled）赢得了“契尔特纳姆”文学艺术奖（Cheltenham Prize）。2000年《我辈孤雏》（When We Were Orphans），再次获得布克奖提名。2005年《别让我走》（Never Let Me Go），也入围了布克奖后决选名单，并获全世界文学奖奖金zui高的“欧洲小说奖”（European Novel Award）。2009年短篇故事集《夜曲》（Nocturne）。2015年，睽违十年后推出长篇小说《被掩埋的巨人》，再度席卷欧美与亚洲书市。
Kazuo Ishiguro is the 2017 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. His work has been translated into more than 40 languages. BothThe Remains of the Day andNever Let Me Go have sold more than 1 million copies, and both were adapted into highly acclaimed films. Ishiguro’s other work includesThe Buried Giant,Nocturnes,A Pale View of the Hills, andAn Artist of the Floating World.

Niki, the name we finally gave younger daughter, is not an abbreviation; it was a compromise I reached with her father. For paradoxically it was he who wanted to give her a Japanese name, and I— perhaps out of some selfish desire not to be reminded of the past—insisted on an English one. He finally agreed to Niki, thinking it had some vague echo of the East about it.
She came to see me earlier this year, in April, when the days were still cold and drizzly. Perhaps she had intended to stay longer. I do not know. But my country house and the quiet that surrounds it made her restless, and before long i could see she was anxious to return to her life in London. She listened impatiently to my classical records, flicked through numerous magazines. The telephone rang for her regularly, and she would stride across the carpet, her thin figure squeezed into her tight clothes, taking care to dose the door behind her so I would not overhear her conversation. She left after five days.
She did not mention Keiko until the second day. It was a grey windy morning, and we had moved the armchairs nearer the windows to watch the rain falling on my garden.
“Did you expect me to be there?” she asked. “At the funeral, I mean.”
“No, I suppose not. I didn’t really think you’d come.”
“It did upset me, hearing about her. I almost came.”
“I never expected you to come.”
“People didn’t know what was wrong with me,” she said. “I didn’t tell anybody. I suppose I was embarrassed. They wouldn’t understand really, they wouldn’t understand howl felt about it. Sisters are supposed to be people you’re close to, aren’t they. You may not like them much but you’re still close to them. That’s just not how it was though. I don’t even remember what she looked like now.”
“Yes, it’s quite a time since you saw her.”
“I just remember her as someone who used to make me miserable. That’s what I remember about her. But I was sad though, when I heard.”
Perhaps it was not just the quiet that drove my daughter back to London. For although we never dwelt long on the subject of Keiko’s death, it was never far away, hovering over us whenever we talked.
Keiko, unlike Niki was pure Japanese, and more than one newspaper was quick to pick up on this fact. The English are fond of their idea that our race has an instinct for suicide, as if further explanations are unnecessary; for that was all they reported, that she was Japanese and that she had hung herself in her room.
That same evening I was standing at the windows, looking out into the darkness, when I heard Niki say behind me; “What are you thinking about now, Mother?” She was sitting across the settee, a paperback book on her knee.
“I was thinking about someone I knew once. A woman I knew once."
“Someone you knew when you … before you came to
“I knew her when I was living in Nagasaki, if that’s what you mean.” She continued to watch me, so I added: “Along time ago. Long before I met your father."
She seemed satisfied and with some vague comment returned to her book. In many ways Niki is an affectionate child. She had not come simply to see howl had taken the news of Keiko’s death; she had come to me out of a sense of mission. For in recent years she has taken it upon herself to admire certain aspects of my past, and she had come prepared to tell me things were no different now, that I should have no regrets for those choices I once made. In short, to reassure me l was not responsible for Keiko’s death.