书名：An Artist of the Floating World 浮世画家
难度：Lexile蓝思阅读指数1060L
作者：Kazuo Ishiguro
出版社名称：Vintage 
出版时间：1989
语种：英文
ISBN：9780679722663
商品尺寸：13.2 x 1.5 x 20.3 cm
包装：平装
页数：206 （以实物为准）

An Artist of the Floating World《浮世画家》是石黑一雄的第二部长篇小说，获Whitbread奖并进入布克奖短名单。《浮世画家》同样以主人公的会议为基调，以非凡的小说技巧生动地展现了主人公的回忆与思考，写作笔法含蓄委婉，耐人寻味。主人公曾是位显赫一时的浮世绘画家，随着二战日本的战败，他才恍若大梦初醒：原来整个日本民族的过去竟是在为一种荒诞虚幻的理想献身，他的艺术理想也真如其名称一样毫无根基，虚浮于世。

媒体评论：
“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

“一部温柔、动人的悲喜剧。作者展现了一段文化历史上的一个小插曲，完整、自成一格，犹如亨利·詹姆斯的《华盛顿广场》一般。”——《伦敦书评》

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day
In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II.
Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the aftermath of that war, his memories of his youth and of the “floating world”—the nocturnal world of pleasure, entertainment, and drink—offer him both escape and redemption, even as they punish him for betraying his early promise. Indicted by society for its defeat and reviled for his past aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being.
Review
“Good writers abound—good novelists are very rare. Kazuo Ishiguro is that rarity. His second novel,An Artist of the Floating World, is the kind that stretches the reader’s awareness, teaching him to read more perceptively.”  —The New York Times Book Review, Kathryn Morton

战后日本百废待兴，人们积极投身于重建未来中，画家小野看似闲云野鹤的晚年生活却潜伏着一股心灵暗流。为了给小女顺利出嫁营造良好的社会关系，他开始重访故友，重温往事，让记忆回到日本帝国主义统治的那段时期。他频频遭遇与青年一代在思想、世界观上的矛盾和冲突，对曾经笃信和引以为豪的信念与业绩产生了困惑和犹疑，在正视与反思、肯定与否认间备受煎熬。作品以浮世绘般的手法将人物与情节一一串联起来，不见硝烟地把战争、军国主义思潮对普通人、对艺术家人性的摧残委婉展现出来。

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.

If on a sunny day you climb the steep path leading up from the little wooden bridge still referred to around here as “the Bridge of Hesitation”, you will not have to walk far before the roof of my house becomes visible between the tops of two gingko trees. Even if it did not occupy such a commanding position on the hill, the house would still stand out from all others nearby, so that as you come up the path, you may find yourself wondering what sort of wealthy man owns it.
But then I am not, nor have I ever been, a wealthy man. The imposing air of the house will be accounted for, perhaps, if I inform you that it was built by my predecessor, and that he was none other than Akira Sugimura. Of course, you may be new to this city, in which case the name of Akira Sugimura may not be familiar to you. But mention it to anyone who lived here before the war and you will learn that for thirty years or so, Sugimura was unquestionably amongst the city’s most respected and influential men.
If I tell you this, and when arriving at the top of the hill you stand and look at the fine cedar gateway, the large area bound by the garden wall, the roof with its elegant tiles and its stylishly carved ridgepole pointing out over the view, you may well wonder how I came to acquire such a property, being as I claim a man of only moderate means. The truth is, I bought the house for a nominal sum—a figure probably not even half the property’s true value at that time. This was made possible owing to a most curious—some may say foolish—procedure instigated by the Sugimura family during the sale.
It is now already a thing of some fifteen years ago. In those days, when my circumstances seemed to improve with each month, my wife had begun to press me to find a new house. With her usual foresight, she had argued the importance of our having a house in keeping with our status—not out of vanity, but for the sake of our children’s marriage prospects. I saw the sense in this, but since Setsuko, our eldest, was still only fourteen or fifteen, I did not go about the matter with any urgency. Nevertheless, for a year or so, whenever I heard of a suitable house for sale, I would remember to make enquiries. It was one of my pupils who first brought it to my attention that Akira Sugimura’s house, a year after his death, was to be sold off. That I should buy such a house seemed absurd, and I put the suggestion down to the exaggerated respect my pupils always had for me. But I made enquiries all the same, and gained an unexpected response.  
I received a visit one afternoon from two haughty, grey-haired ladies, who turned out to be the daughters of Akira Sugimura. When I expressed my surprise at receiving such personal attention from a family of such distinction, the elder of the sisters told me coldly that they had not come simply out of courtesy. Over the previous months, a fair number of enquiries had been received for their late father’s house, but the family had in the end decided to refuse all but four of the applications. These four applicants had been selected care­fully by family members on grounds purely of good character and achievement.