The Book of Aron is a novel by American writer Jim Shepard, published in English by Knopf in 2015; the Chinese edition, translated by Wang Chenguang, was released by CITIC Press Group in December 2017. The story takes place in Nazi-occupied Poland. When Aron, a small, sullen boy, moves with his family from the countryside to Warsaw, he is only eight years old and has grown up hearing people call him "stupid" and "heartless." After the Germans enter the city and the Jewish quarter is walled off, the family's life declines steadily: hunger, lice, typhus, and death become daily fare. His mother dies quietly in a dim ward, and Aron loses his last support, transforming from an obedient young apprentice into a streetwise smuggler who survives by slipping through holes in the wall and trading food to keep himself and his companions alive. One cold winter day, the old doctor Janusz Korczak "picks him up" from the streets of Warsaw and brings him back to the orphanage he runs. Korczak takes the children around to solicit donations and fight for rations, stubbornly striving for every child's right to live and to be treated as a human being. In the old man's presence, something in Aron that life had worn away begins slowly to return. In the summer of 1942, German soldiers storm the orphanage and herd nearly two hundred children onto a train bound for the Treblinka camp. Korczak could have saved himself but chose to board the train with the children to the very end. The novel unfolds in Aron's hard, prickly, and occasionally comic first-person voice, offering no cheap redemption or sentimentality. Drawing on extensive historical sources, Shepard embeds the real historical figure Korczak and the atrocities of the camps in a child's eyes, forcing readers to confront the question: in a world where goodness is not allowed to survive, does goodwill still have any meaning?
这是一个很容易写坏、也容易被读者的眼泪淹没的题材，而谢泼德偏偏用了最不讨巧的办法：把叙述权交给一个十二三岁的“坏孩子”。安伦自私、嘴毒、偷东西不脸红，还常常在最要命的时候说出一句让人发笑的刻薄话。正是这份不驯服，让华沙犹太区的饥饿、跳蚤和抬尸板车显得格外真实——它不是被怜悯的对象，而是一个孩子必须每天设法活过去的地方。 真正让这本书立住的是科扎克医生。这位历史上有名的教育家、孤儿院院长，在书里既不圣洁也不悲情，他会疲惫、会算计、会为了几袋土豆和人周旋，却始终不肯把孩子当成需要被同情的“小可怜”，而是坚持他们有犯错、有成长、也有尊严的权利。结尾那趟开往特雷布林卡的火车，谢泼德没有写成一个高潮，而写得平静得可怕。 《华盛顿邮报》《赫芬顿邮报》、BuzzFeed 与美国图书馆协会都把它列入年度好书；有评论把它与《辛德勒的名单》相提并论。如果你想读一本不煽情、不提供安慰、却能在合上书后很久仍在心里发沉的大屠杀小说，这本书值得留着。
Founded in 1988 and affiliated with China CITIC Group, CITIC Press focuses on business and economics, social sciences, literature and children's books, with common categories covering social sciences, finance, literature, Eastern philosophy and literary appreciation. Its library holds 91 titles, including Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens trilogy, Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Wu Xiaobo's Thirty Years of Strife: Chinese Enterprises 1978–2008, Nelly Sachs's The Weight of Butterflies: Selected Poems of Nelly Sachs, as well as New Interpretations of the Analects and Chiang Hsun's lectures on Dream of the Red Chamber. Its authors and translators include Lin Junhong, Ba Shusong, Chen Li and Chang Fen-ling. Overall, the press introduces influential works in finance and social sciences while balancing classic translation and local appreciation in literature and Eastern philosophy, combining academic depth with accessible reading.
这本书的作者和译者是谁？
作者是美国作家吉姆·谢泼德（Jim Shepard），威廉姆斯学院创意写作教授；中文版由王晨光翻译，中信出版集团2017年12月出版，全书210页，约13万字。
科扎克医生是真实人物吗？
是。雅努什·科扎克（Janusz Korczak）是波兰犹太医生、教育家和儿童权利倡导者，经营华沙犹太区孤儿院。1942年8月，他与孤儿院的孩子们一同被押往特雷布林卡集中营并遇难。
英文原书名是什么？
《The Book of Aron》，2015年由Knopf出版，获《华盛顿邮报》、BuzzFeed 等媒体年度图书及美国图书馆协会年度好书等荣誉。
读这本书需要什么历史背景？
了解二战纳粹占领波兰、华沙犹太区（1940—1943）及特雷布林卡灭绝营的基本情况即可，小说本身不依赖专业知识，但背景知识能帮你读懂很多细节。
适合中学生读吗？
题材涉及饥饿、疾病、儿童死亡与集体屠杀，文字本身不晦涩但情感冲击强。高中生及以上、对历史有一定认知的读者较适合，年龄更小的读者建议在师长引导下阅读。
