书名：The Blind Assassin 盲刺客

作者：Margaret Atwood玛格丽特·阿特伍德

出版社名称：Anchor

出版时间：2001

语种： 英文

ISBN：9780385720953

商品尺寸：13.1 x 2.2 x 20.3 cm

包装：平装

页数：544 （以实物为准）

The Blind Assassin《盲刺客》是“加拿大文学女王”玛格丽特·阿特伍德的重要作品，获2000年英国布克奖。其对多种文本的混合、结构的嵌套，以及女性视角叙述的娴熟运用，都达到了此前从未实现过的高峰。 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author ofThe Handmaid’s TaleWINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZEInThe Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood weaves together strands of gothic suspense, romance, and science fiction into one utterly spellbinding narrative. The novel begins with the mysterious death—a possible suicide—of a young woman named Laura Chase in 1945. Decades later, Laura’s sister Iris recounts her memories of their childhood, and of the dramatic deaths that have punctuated their wealthy, eccentric family’s history. Intertwined with Iris’s account are chapters from the scandalous novel that made Laura famous, in which two illicit lovers amuse each other by spinning a tale of a blind killer on a distant planet. These richly layered stories-within-stories gradually illuminate the secrets that have long haunted the Chase family, coming together in a brilliant and astonishing final twist. Review “The first great novel of the new millennium.”  —Newsday “Absorbing... expertly rendered... Virtuosic storytelling [is] on display.”  —The New York Times “Brilliant... Opulent... Atwood is a poet.... as well as a contriver of fiction, and scarcely a sentence of her quick, dry yet avid prose fails to do useful work, adding to a picture that becomes enormous.”  —John Updike,The New Yorker “Chilling... Lyrical... [Atwood’s] most ambitious work to date.”  —The Boston Globe “Hauntingly powerful.... A novel of luminous prose, scalpel-precise insights and fierce characters... Atwood’s new work is so assured, so elegant and so incandescently intelligent, she casts her contemporaries in the shade.”  —The Atlanta Journal—Constitution “Grand storytelling on a grand scale... Sheerly enjoyable.”  —The Washington Post Book World “Bewitching... A killer novel.... Atwood’s crisp wit and steely realism are reminiscent of Edith Wharton... A wonderfully complex narrative.”  —The Christian Science Monitor “A tour de force.”  —Chicago Tribune

The Blind Assassin《盲刺客》是一部结构奇巧、故事里套故事的小说。小说有两个女主人公，一个是劳拉，小说一开始就在车祸中死去；另一个是她的姐姐艾丽丝，生活在死者的阴影中，回忆着快被湮没的往事。有关盲刺客的故事是劳拉生前写的，描述了在动荡的20世纪30年代，一个富家小姐和一个在逃的穷小伙子的恋情。同时，这对恋人想象出了发生在另一个星球上的故事。这个虚构的故事里充满了爱、牺牲与背叛。而现实生活中也是如此，艾丽丝嫁给了富商理查德，在外人看来，这是一桩美满的婚姻，殊不知，理查德将魔爪伸向了小姨子劳拉，于是，劳拉的车祸令人产生了怀疑…… The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: “Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.” They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister’s death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura’s story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. EntitledThe Blind Assassin,” it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist. Brilliantly weaving together such seemingly disparate elements, Atwood creates a world of astonishing vision and unforgettable impact.

被誉为“加拿大文学女王”的玛格丽特·阿特伍德是一位勤奋多产的作家，迄今已有14部诗集、11部长篇小说、5部短篇小说集和3部文学评论出版，并主编了《牛津加拿大英语诗歌》《牛津加拿大英语短篇小说》等文集，此外还撰写了不少广播、电视、戏剧、儿童文学作品等。她获得过除诺贝尔文学奖之外的几乎所有的国际文学奖和不计其数的其他奖励和荣誉，并被多伦多大学等十多所国内外大学授予荣誉博士学位，享有很高的国际声誉。她的作品已被译成30多种文字。2017年，阿特伍德获卡夫卡奖和德国书业和平奖。 Margaret Atwood, whose work has been published in thirty-five countries, is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition toThe Handmaid’s Tale, her novels includeCat’s Eye, short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize;Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy;The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize;Oryx and Crake, short-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize;The Year of the Flood;MaddAddam; and her most recent,The Heart Goes Last. She is the recipient of theLos Angeles Times Innovator’s Award, and lives in Toronto with the writer Graeme Gibson.

The Blind Assassin: The hard-boiled eggWhat will it be, then? he says. Dinner jackets and romance, or shipwrecks on a barren coast? You can have your pick: jungles, tropical islands, mountains. Or another dimension of space—that’s what I’m best at. Another dimension of space? Oh really! Don’t scoff, it’s a useful address. Anything you like can happen there. Spaceships and skin-tight uniforms, ray guns, Martians with the bodies of giant squids, that sort of thing. You choose, she says. You’re the professional. How about a desert? I’ve always wanted to visit one. With an oasis, of course. Some date palms might be nice. She’s tearing the crust off her sandwich. She doesn’t like the crusts. Not much scope, with deserts. Not many features, unless you add some tombs. Then you could have a pack of nude women who’ve been dead for three thousand years, with lithe, curvaceous figures, ruby-red lips, azure hair in a foam of tumbled curls, and eyes like snake-filled pits. But I don’t think I could fob those off on you. Lurid isn’t your style. You never know. I might like them. I doubt it. They’re for the huddled masses. Popular on the covers though—they’ll writhe all over a fellow, they have to be beaten off with rifle butts. Could I have another dimension of space, and also the tombs and the dead women, please? That’s a tall order, but I’ll see what I can do. I could throw in some sacrificial virgins as well, with metal breastplates and silver ankle chains and diaphanous vestments. And a pack of ravening wolves, extra. I can see you’ll stop at nothing. You want the dinner jackets instead? Cruise ships, white linen, wrist-kissing and hypocritical slop? No. All right. Do what you think is best. Cigarette? She shakes her head for no. He lights his own, striking the match on his thumbnail. You’ll set fire to yourself, she says. I never have yet. She looks at his rolled-up shirt sleeve, white or a pale blue, then his wrist, the browner skin of his hand. He throws out radiance, it must be reflected sun. Why isn’t everyone staring? Still, he’s too noticeable to be out here—out in the open. There are other people around, sitting on the grass or lying on it, propped on one elbow—other picnickers, in their pale summer clothing. It’s all very proper. Nevertheless she feels that the two of them are alone; as if the apple tree they’re sitting under is not a tree but a tent; as if there’s a line drawn around them with chalk. Inside this line, they’re invisible. Space it is, then, he says. With tombs and virgins and wolves—but on the instalment plan. Agreed? The instalment plan? You know, like furniture. She laughs. No, I’m serious. You can’t skimp, it might take days. We’ll have to meet again. She hesitates. All right, she says. If I can. If I can arrange it. Good, he says. Now I have to think. He keeps his voice casual. Too much urgency might put her off. On the Planet of—let’s see. Not Saturn, it’s too close. On the Planet Zycron, located in another dimension of space, there’s a rubble-strewn plain. To the north is the ocean, which is violet in colour. To the west is a range of mountains, said to be roamed after sunset by the voracious undead female inhabitants of the crumbling tombs located there. You see, I’ve put the tombs in right off the bat. That’s very conscientious of you, she says. I stick to my bargains. To the south is a burning waste of sand, and to the east are several steep valleys that might once have been rivers. I suppose there are canals, like Mars? Oh, canals, and all sorts of things. Abundant traces of an ancient and once highly developed civilization, though this region is now only sparsely inhabited by roaming bands of primitive nomads. In the middle of the plain is a large mound of stones. The land around is arid, with a few scrubby bushes. Not exactly a desert, but close enough. Is there a cheese sandwich left? She rummages in the paper bag. No, she says, but there’s a hard-boiled egg. She’s never been this happy before. Everything is fresh again, still to be enacted. Just what the doctor ordered, he says. A bottle of lemonade, a hard-boiled egg, and Thou. He rolls the egg between his palms, cracking the shell, then peeling it away. She watches his mouth, the jaw, the teeth. Beside me singing in the public park, she says. Here’s the salt for it.