书名：American Gods 美国众神

难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数840L

作者：Neil Gaiman尼尔·盖曼

出版社名称：William Morrow

出版时间：2017

语种：英文

ISBN：9780062689733

商品尺寸：10.6 x 4.5 x 19 cm

包装：简装

页数：784

American Gods《美国众神》是英国作家尼尔·盖曼的代表作，荣获了雨果奖、星云奖、轨迹奖、斯托克奖、SFX奖、格芬奖6项幻想类文学大奖！自2001年出版至今，全球已发行30余种语言，近200个版本。 

惊悚大师斯蒂芬·金称赞尼尔·盖曼是故事的宝库，拥有他是我们的幸运；《纽约时报》评价它“用灵巧的手为我们编织神话”。2017年，《美国众神》被改编为电视剧，由尼尔·盖曼亲自担纲编剧，引发全球收视热潮。 

本版本为英文版美剧封面版，内容完整无删减。

媒体评论：“尼尔·盖曼是故事的宝库，拥有他是我们的幸运……他的创作力之丰沃与作品整体的水准之高，既神奇又吓人。”——惊悚大师 斯蒂芬·金 “尼尔·盖曼是英国之宝，现在他也同样成为了美国之宝。”——科幻大师 威廉·吉布森 “《美国众神》近乎奇迹……尼尔·盖曼用令人无比信服的方式，讲述了一个令人难以置信的故事。”——奇幻作家 乔纳森·卡罗尔 

Now a STARZ Original Series produced by FremantleMedia North America starring Ricky Whittle, Ian McShane, Emily Browning, and Pablo Schreiber 

Locked behind bars for three years, Shadow did his time, quietly waiting for the day when he could return to Eagle Point, Indiana. A man no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, all he wanted was to be with Laura, the wife he deeply loved, and start a new life. But just days before his release, Laura and Shadow’s best friend are killed in an accident. With his life in pieces and nothing to keep him tethered, Shadow accepts a job from a beguiling stranger he meets on the way home, an enigmatic man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday. A trickster and a rogue, Wednesday seems to know more about Shadow than Shadow does himself. Life as Wednesday’s bodyguard, driver, and errand boy is far more interesting and dangerous than Shadow ever imagined. Soon Shadow learns that the past never dies… and that beneath the placid surface of everyday life a storm is brewing—an epic war for the very soul of America—and that he is standing squarely in its path. 

Review 

“Original, engrossing, and endlessly inventive.” 

——George R. R. Martin

“American Gods is sexy, thrilling, dark, funny and poetic.” 

——Teller, of Penn & Teller

“American Gods is like a fast run downhill through a maze—both exhilarating and twisted.” 

——Jane Lindskold

The storm was coming... For the three years Shadow spent in prison, all he wanted was to get back to the loving arms of his wife and stay out of trouble for the rest of his life. But days before his release, he learns that his wife has been killed in an accident, and his world becomes a colder place. On the plane ride home to the funeral, Shadow meets a man who calls himself Mr. Wednesday, a self-declared grifter, who offers Shadow a job.Shadow, a man with nothing to lose, accepts. But he soon learns that his role in Wednesday’s schemes will be far more dangerous than he could have ever imagined. American Gods is a dark and kaleidoscopic journey deep into myth and across an America at once eerily familiar and utterly alien. Magnificently told, American Gods is a work of literary magic that will haunt the listener long after it has been heard. 

风暴逼近，一场新旧神灵的大战即将爆发。 影子刑满获释了。他的理想很简单：回到妻子身边，重拾旧日的工作和生活。但妻子死了，过去的生活也随之化为泡影。 就在他彷徨无计的时候，一个陌生人来到他身边。他有一个奇怪的名字，星期三，而且似乎对影子的一切了如指掌。他向影子提供了一份工作，充当他的保镖，陪他漫游美国。 影子上路了。但他渐渐发现，星期三所游历的美国并不完全是现实中的美国。他似乎有一种神力，能深入现实背后，进入“后台”，显示出支配美国社会生活的种种力量，见识种种奇异的人物。 他们是神灵。他们的历史就是美国的历史，他们造就了美国。

Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Neverwhere,Stardust,American Gods,Coraline,Anansi Boys,The Graveyard Book,Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett),The Ocean at the End of the Lane, andThe Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains; theSandman series of graphic novels; and the story collectionsSmoke and Mirrors,Fragile Things, and Trigger Warning. He is the winner of numerous literary honors, including the Hugo, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy awards, and the Newbery and Carnegie Medals. Originally from England, he now lives in the United States. He is Professor in the Arts at Bard College. 

尼尔·盖曼（Neil Gaiman，1960—）是近十年来欧美文坛崛起的耀眼的明星，被视为新一代幻想文学的代表。其创作领域横跨幻想小说、科幻小说、恐怖小说、儿童小说、漫画以及歌词。他的作品不但部部畅销，更获奖无数。《文学传记辞典》将他列为十大后现代作家之一。代表作有《睡魔》《鬼妈妈》《美国众神》等。

Shadow had done three years in prison. He was big enough and looked don’t-fuck-with-me enough that his biggest problem was killing time. So he kept himself in shape, and taught himself coin tricks, and thought a lot about how much he loved his wife. The best thing—in Shadow’s opinion, perhaps the only good thing—about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he’d plunged as low as he could plunge and he’d hit bottom. He didn’t worry that the man was going to get him, because the man had got him. He was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring, because yesterday had brought it. It did not matter, Shadow decided, if you had done what you had been convicted of or not. In his experience everyone he met in prison was aggrieved about something: there was always something the authorities had got wrong, something they said you did when you didn’t—or you didn’t do quite like they said you did. What was important was that they had gotten you. He had noticed it in the first few days, when everything, from the slang to the bad food, was new. Despite the misery and the utter skin-crawling horror of incarceration, he was breathing relief. Shadow tried not to talk too much. Somewhere around the middle of year two he mentioned his theory to Low Key Lyesmith, his cellmate. Low Key, who was a grifter from Minnesota, smiled his scarred smile. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s true. It’s even better when you’ve been sentenced to death. That’s when you remember the jokes about the guys who kicked their boots off as the noose flipped around their necks, because their friends always told them they’d die with their boots on.” “Is that a joke?” asked Shadow. “Damn right. Gallows humor. Best kind there is.” “When did they last hang a man in this state?” asked Shadow. “How the hell should I know?” Lyesmith kept his orange-blond hair pretty much shaved. You could see the lines of his skull. “Tell you what, though. This country started going to hell when they stopped hanging folks. No gallows dirt. No gallows deals.” Shadow shrugged. He could see nothing romantic in a death sentence. If you didn’t have a death sentence, he decided, then prison was, at best, only a temporary reprieve from life, for two reasons. First, life creeps back into prison. There are always places to go further down. Life goes on. And second, if you just hang in there, someday they’re going to have to let you out. In the beginning it was too far away for Shadow to focus on. Then it became a distant beam of hope, and he learned how to tell himself “this too shall pass” when the prison shit went down, as prison shit always did. One day the magic door would open and he’d walk through it. So he marked off the days on his Songbirds of North America calendar, which was the only calendar they sold in the prison commissary, and the sun went down and he didn’t see it and the sun came up and he didn’t see it. He practiced coin tricks from a book he found in the wasteland of the prison library; and he worked out; and he made lists in his head of what he’d do when he got out of prison.