The Australian novelist Richard Flanagan was awarded the Man Booker Prize on Tuesday for “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” which tells the harrowing story of an Australian surgeon who is held in a Japanese P.O.W. camp and is forced to work on the Thailand-Burma Railway.
澳大利亚小说家理查德·弗拉纳根于周二凭小说《通往深远北方的窄路》(The Narrow Road to the Deep North)获得布克奖，小说讲述了一位被拘押在日军战俘营，被迫修建泰缅铁路的澳大利亚外科医生的悲惨故事。

Mr. Flanagan, 53, who was born in Tasmania, is the third Australian to win the prize, following Thomas Keneally and the two-time winner Peter Carey.
弗拉纳根53岁，出生于塔斯马尼亚，是第三位获得布克奖的澳大利亚作家，前两位是托马斯·基尼利(Thomas Kenelly)和两获布克奖的彼得·凯里(Peter Carey)。
The philosopher A. C. Grayling, the chairman of the judges, called the book “a magnificent novel of love and war.” He praised Mr. Flanagan’s elegant and forceful prose and his ability to bridge “East and West, past and present, with a story of guilt and heroism.”
评委会主席、哲学家A·C·格雷林(A. C. Grayling)说这本书是“一部关于爱与战争的精彩小说”，他赞扬弗拉纳根优雅而有力的叙述，以及他“以一个充满罪恶和英雄主义的故事，为东方与西方、过去与现在”架起桥梁。
“The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” which takes its title from a 17th-century Japanese haiku by Basho, is Mr. Flanagan’s sixth novel. It was inspired by a painful piece of family history: Mr. Flanagan’s father was taken prisoner by the Japanese during World War II and forced to work as a slave laborer.
《通往深远北方的窄路》书名来自17世纪日本诗人松尾芭蕉所做的俳句，是弗拉纳根的第六部小说。灵感来自一段痛苦的家族史：弗拉纳根的父亲在“二战”中曾被日军囚禁，被迫做奴工。
In an article for The Sydney Morning Herald last year, Mr. Flanagan described how he had written five different versions of the story before he was satisfied. In the end, he spent 12 years working on the novel. To research it, he traveled to Thailand and walked along the railway, also known as the Death Railway, occasionally carrying rocks to mimic the experience of the prisoners. In Japan, he interviewed several former guards who had worked on the railway. He also interviewed his father extensively.
去年，弗拉纳根在《悉尼先驱晨报》(Sydney Morning Herald)上撰文说，这本书前后写了五个版本，才终于满意。最后，他花费了12年的时间创作这部小说。为了做研究，他到泰国旅行，沿着这条被称为“死亡铁路”的铁路线行走，有时还扛着石头，体验囚犯们的感受。他到日本采访了若干曾在那条铁路工作过的战俘营卫兵，他也对自己的父亲做了大量采访。
His father died just after Mr. Flanagan finished a draft of “The Narrow Road to the Deep North.”
他的父亲在《通往深远北方的窄路》手稿完成后去世。
“He never asked me what the story was, and he trusted me to write something that wouldn’t shame the memory of the people who died,” Mr. Flanagan said in a telephone interview after the awards ceremony. “I only realized after he died what an extraordinary gift that was. As a novelist, you have to be free. Books can’t be an act of filial duty.”
“他从没问过我这个故事是什么样的，他只是委托我来写点东西，让死者的记忆不致蒙羞，”颁奖礼后，弗拉纳根在电话采访中说。“直到他去世后，我才意识到这是一份多么非凡的馈赠。作为一个小说家，你必须自由。写书不应当成为子女的职责。”
The narrative toggles back and forth between the prisoner-of-war camp, where the surgeon, Dorrigo Evans, struggles to survive and remembers a love affair with his uncle’s young wife, and contemporary Australia, where Evans is an old man. The book received strong reviews in the United States and Britain for its stark depictions of the brutal conditions that P.O.W.s faced, and for Mr. Flanagan’s bold decision to write at times from the guards’ point of view.
小说的叙事有时发生在战俘营中，军医多利格·埃文斯(Dorrigo Evans)拼命求生，同时回忆着自己同年轻的婶婶的一段风流韵事，有时又切换到现代的澳大利亚，埃文斯已经垂垂老矣。这本书因为对战俘残酷境遇的直白叙述，以及弗拉纳根有时使用看守视角叙事的大胆做法，在英美获得强烈反响。
The novel, which was published by Chatto & Windus in Britain, was released in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf in August. Knopf will print an additional 53,000 copies, a spokesman said.
小说在英国由查托与温德斯(Chatto & Windus)出版社出版，在美国由阿尔弗莱德·A·科诺普夫(Alfred A. Knopf)出版社于8月出版。科诺普夫出版社的一个发言人说，该社将加印5.3万本。
The Booker, with its cachet and prize of roughly $80,000, is Britain’s most prestigious literary award. The contest was especially heated and closely watched this year because, for the first time, the prize was open to all novels written in English and published in Britain, regardless of the author’s nationality. Previously, only writers from Britain, the Commonwealth nations, Ireland and Zimbabwe were eligible.
布克奖具有崇高威信，奖金约为8万美元，是英国最富盛名的文学奖。今年竞争尤其激烈，难分上下，因为该奖首次向所有以英文写作并在英国出版的小说开放，不管作者来自哪个国家。之前只有来自英国、英联邦国家、爱尔兰和津巴布韦的作家才能参选。
The new rules incited a backlash in Britain, where some authors and literary critics fretted about a coming American literary invasion. When the longlist of nominees was announced in July, those fears seemed to have been borne out: Five of the 13 nominees were American, prompting the BBC and other British news media outlets to complain that British and Commonwealth authors were being “edged out” by American interlopers. Two American authors, Joshua Ferris and Karen Joy Fowler, made the six-book shortlist.
新规则在英国引起了激烈的反应，一些作家和文学评论家对即将到来的美国文学入侵感到不安。7月，评委会公布了提名者的大名单，13位提名作品中有五本是美国人创作，BBC和其他英国新闻媒体纷纷抱怨英国和英联邦作家被美国闯入者“排挤”了。其后，约书亚·费里斯(Joshua Ferris)和凯伦·乔伊·弗勒(Karen Joy Fowler)两位美国作家的作品入围了六本书的最终决选名单。
This year’s nominees included Mr. Ferris’s novel “To Rise Again at a Decent Hour,” which features a misanthropic New York dentist; Ms. Fowler’s “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,” about a young woman whose twin sister and older brother disappeared; “J,” a dystopian novel by Howard Jacobson, a former Booker winner; Neel Mukherjee’s “The Lives of Others,” which takes place in 1960s Calcutta; and Ali Smith’s formally innovative novel, “How to Be Both,” which tells two stories — a historical tale about a 15th-century Renaissance artist and a contemporary narrative about a teenage girl whose mother has died — that can be read in either order.
今年的提名作品中包括费里斯的小说《在体面的时刻再度崛起》(To Rise Again at a Decent Hour)，书中写了一个愤世嫉俗的纽约牙医；弗勒的作品是《我们都彻底疯了》(We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves)，写了一个年轻女人，她的双胞胎姊妹和哥哥失踪了；《J》是一部反乌托邦小说，由前布克奖得主霍华德·雅克布森(Howard Jacobson)创作；尼尔·马克赫耶(Neel Mukherjee)的《别人的生活》(The Lives of Others)发生在20世纪60年代的加尔各答；艾莉·史密斯(Ali Smith)的小说《怎样二者皆是》(How to Be Both)是一部形式上有所创新的小说，讲述了两个故事，一个是15世纪文艺复兴时期艺术家的历史故事，一个是发生在现代，一名十几岁的丧母女孩的故事，二者先读哪个都可以。
Last year, Eleanor Catton won the prize for her 848-page experimental novel, “The Luminaries,” becoming, at 28, the youngest writer to win the Booker.
去年，28岁的埃莉诺·卡顿(Eleanor Catton)凭着848页的实验小说《发光体》成了史上最年轻的布克奖得主。
Mr. Flanagan’s victory was cheered by the British newspaper The Guardian, among others, and seemed to ease concerns about the rule changes. He dedicated the novel to Prisoner 335 — his father’s inmate number.
英国《卫报》(The Guardian)等媒体欢庆弗拉纳根的成功，对规则改变的不安似乎有所缓解。弗拉纳根把这部小说献给335号囚犯，这是他父亲在战俘营中的号码。