(单词翻译:单击)
A man wakes to find himself transformed.
一个人醒来，发现自己变了样。
He looks around, seeking his bearings as he tries to come to terms with what has happened to him overnight, perhaps after uneasy dreams.
他环顾四周，寻找自己的方向，试图接受一夜之间发生在他身上的事情，也许是在做了不安的梦之后。
He looks at his hand, which he knows like … well, like the back of his hand.
他看着自己的手，他知道这就像……嗯，就像他的手背。
It is unfamiliar, the hand of another.
这是陌生的手，别人的手。
He seeks out his reflection. The man who looks back at him is a stranger.
他寻找自己的倒影。回头看他的人是个陌生人。
These are the opening beats of Mohsin Hamid’s latest novel, The Last White Man: “One morning Anders, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown.”
以下是莫辛·哈米德最新小说《最后一个白人》的开篇:“一天早上，白人安德斯醒来，发现自己的肤色已经变成了无可否认的深棕色。”
These are also the opening beats—albeit about a black man who wakes up white—of A. Igoni Barrett’s Blackass (2015), the epigraph of which cites Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” to make the debt explicit.
这些也是伊戈尼·巴雷特《黑腚》(2015)的开篇--尽管讲的是一个黑人醒来后变成白人的故事，这部作品的题词引用了卡夫卡的《变形记》来清楚地表达人情债。
It’s also the premise of a chapter of Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country (2016) about a black woman who wakes up white, which, per its title, “Jekyll in Hyde Park,” alludes to Robert Louis Stevenson’s scene from 1886: “The hand of Henry Jekyll … large, firm, white, and comely” appears “in the yellow light of a mid-London morning, lying half shut on the bed-clothes … lean, corded, knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair.”
这也是马特·拉夫的《恶魔之地》(2016)中有一章的前言，讲的是一个黑人女性醒来时变成了白人，这一章的标题是《海德公园里的杰基尔》，暗指罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森在1886年的场景:“亨利·杰基尔的手……宽大、结实、白皙、标致”出现在“伦敦中部的晨曦中，他的手半合在被单上……瘦削、紧致、指节分明，柔和白皙，被浓密的毛发遮蔽着。”
Perhaps Hamid is hoping to make good on a saying from his first novel, Moth Smoke (2000): “Tales with unoriginal beginnings are those most likely later to surprise.”
也许哈米德是希望兑现他的第一部小说《蛾烟》(2000)中的一句话:“非原创的故事开头是最有可能在之后给人带来惊喜的。”
Like the hero of Herman Raucher’s novelization of Watermelon Man (1970), Anders’s first impulse is to mistake himself for a dark-skinned home intruder.
就像赫尔曼·劳彻小说《西瓜人》(1970)中的主人公一样，安德斯的第一反应是把自己误认为是一个黑皮肤的闯入者。
Like the hero of Harry Stephen Keeler’s The Man Who Changed His Skin (1959), Anders soon realizes this isn’t just a tan, either: “He looked like another person, not just another person, but a different kind of person, utterly different.”
就像哈利·斯蒂芬·基勒的《贩肤走卒》(1959)中的男主角一样，安德斯很快意识到这不仅仅是晒黑了:“他看起来像另一个人，不仅仅是另一个人，而是另一种人，完全不同了。”
Like the hero of Mortimer Weisinger’s pulp story, “Pigments Is Pigments” (1935), Anders reacts with shock at his darkening, then falls into a “murderous rage.”
就像莫蒂默·魏辛格的劣质小说《颜料就是颜料》(1935)中的主人公一样，安德斯对自己变黑的反应是震惊，然后是“怒不可遏”。
As with the more scientifically minded versions of this plot, like Jess Row’s Your Face in Mine (2014) and Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s We Cast a Shadow (2019), we’ll soon find out whether the transformation is explicable or reversible.
就像杰斯·罗的《你的脸在我身上》(2014年)和莫里斯·卡洛斯·鲁芬的《我们投下阴影》(2019年)等更科学的小说一样，我们很快就会知道这种转变是可以解释的还是可逆的。
We’ll discover whether it afflicts just Anders or spreads to others like a fad, as in George S. Schuyler’s Black No More (1931), or like a plague, as in Junot Díaz’s story “Monstro” (2012).
我们会发现，变换肤色是只折磨安德斯一人，还是像乔治·舒勒的《黑色不再》(1931)那样像时尚一样传播给他人，还是像朱诺·迪亚斯的故事《怪物》(2012)那样像瘟疫一样传播给他人。
