A Single Man

克里斯托弗·伊舍伍德Nanfang Publishing House2014

No rating yet
ISBN
9787550108172

Tags

Literature Foreign Literature Film SourceAmerican SocietyQueer LiteratureHuman NatureStream of ConsciousnessDeathFull-Length Novel1960sAmerican Fiction

Summary

A Single Man is the representative novel by the English-American writer Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986). This edition is the 50th-anniversary collector's edition, translated by Song Yingtang and published by Nanfang Publishing House in 2014. The story is set in Los Angeles, California, in 1962. The protagonist, George, is an English professor at a local university who has lived with his partner, Jim, for sixteen years. A sudden car accident takes Jim's life, and George's daily existence is thereafter occupied by an invisible void: the house still bears the arrangement of two people, yet the streets, the classroom, the neighbors, and colleagues all remind him that the one who could share everything with him is gone. The entire novel unfolds within a single day, describing his waking, teaching, conversations with students, appointments, and visits to friends, as well as his repeated chewing over memories and thoughts of death in the gaps of trivial daily life. In a calm, restrained, and somewhat ironic tone, Isherwood records through George's eyes the conservative, respectable yet suffocating atmosphere of early 1960s American society, writing of how a middle-aged man whose grief is neither publicly acknowledged nor anywhere confided in struggles to play the "normal person." The novel's extensive interior monologue and stream-of-consciousness technique make this day both like a lengthy routine and like a last day that might end at any moment. In 2009, the work was adapted by Tom Ford into a film of the same name starring Colin Firth, which received numerous nominations and awards from the Oscars, the Golden Globes, and the Venice Film Festival, and brought this half-century-old work back into the view of Chinese readers.

Editor's review

一天的篇幅，写尽一个人的半生。艾什伍德没有安排戏剧性的情节，只让乔治在洛杉矶的街道、教室与客厅之间移动，让读者跟随他的目光看见旁人如何若无其事，也看见他如何把巨大的丧失折叠进最平常的动作里。这种克制反而让悲伤更有重量。本书在英美文学史上有特别的位置：它是二十世纪同志文学较早以平视、优雅而非猎奇的姿态书写同性伴侣日常的作品之一，艾德蒙·怀特称它为“为现代同志解放做了开场”。艾什伍德本人的经历也让这份平静有了底色——他青年时代在柏林见证纳粹兴起，后入籍美国，与奥登等作家往来密切，文字里那种“旁观者”的敏感与自嘲，正来自这样的人生。本版由台湾译者宋瑛堂翻译，译笔流畅，保留了原文略带冷幽默的语气；50周年典藏版另附书签与小册子，适合收藏。读完小说再看汤姆·福特改编的同名电影，会发现两者气质相通：都在讲一个人如何与自己告别。

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. 先不急着找情节，试着把注意力放在乔治观察细节的方式上，这是全书最重要的“动作”。
  2. 可以在一两天内连续读完，因为故事本身只在一天之内发生，连续阅读更能感受时间的重量。
  3. 读完后配合汤姆·福特改编的电影《单身男子》观看，比较小说与电影在处理回忆与结尾时的不同。
  4. 若想延伸，可读同为伊舍伍德作品的《别了，柏林》，理解他与二十世纪三十年代欧洲的关系。

About the publisher

Nanfang Publishing House China · Founded in 1993

Nanfang Publishing House is a publishing institution based in Hainan Province, China, publishing mainly books in science and technology, education, economics and the social sciences, while also venturing into foreign literature. Its representative title in our database, Move Aside, Let Me Embrace Happiness, reflects the publisher's orientation toward introducing foreign literary works, with related authors including Matthew Quick and Pu Wenyue. As public information is limited, the details of this publisher's title list and author pool remain incomplete; at present, the single book in our database and its common category are the only basis for understanding its publishing direction, and further bibliographic data may be added later.

FAQ

《单身》和《单身男子》是同一本书吗？ 是同一部作品的不同中文译名，原著均为 Christopher Isherwood 的 A Single Man。大陆常见版本有南方出版社2014年宋瑛堂译本《单身》和上海译文出版社2020年禹磊译本《单身男子》，译者与书名不同，内容同源。
这本书有目录吗？ 小说篇幅不长，采用一天之内的连续叙事，中文版未设置分章节的标题目录，因此本书不提供图书目录条目。
读之前需要先看电影吗？ 不需要。小说与电影可各自独立欣赏，先读原著能更完整地感受乔治的内心独白，再看电影则能体会改编者对结局与回忆片段的处理差异。
这本书的阅读难度如何？ 语言并不艰深，但叙述以内心独白和感官细节为主，缺少传统的情节推进，需要读者耐心跟随人物的思绪，适合有一定外国文学阅读经验的读者。

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

克里斯托弗·伊舍伍德 Author

Four of Christopher Isherwood's works have been translated and introduced in the Chinese-speaking world: A Single Man, Christopher and His Kind, Goodbye to Berlin, and Mr Norris Changes Trains, usually classified as foreign literature. Publicly available information about his nationality and dates of birth and death is limited, so no speculation is offered here. Judging from the subjects of his works, he is skilled at using urban life and personal relationships as threads to depict individuals' circumstances and emotions amid changing times, with a calm and restrained style, careful observation, and often an autobiographical coloring. Overall, his writing combines literary quality with social observation, forming a modern author worthy of attention among Chinese readers.