The Strain
Guillermo del Toro / Chuck HoganLijiang Publishing House2014
No rating yet- Word count
- 250K words
- Series
- The Strain Trilogy
- ISBN
- 9787540771805
Tags
Literature Foreign Literature VampireEpidemiologyDisease ControlFantasy NovelThriller NovelWorld War IIReligious AllegoryNew YorkSummary
A Boeing 777 flying from Berlin to New York lands at JFK Airport and then goes completely silent: every window shade is pulled down, the cabin lights are out, and all communication is lost. Fearing a bioterrorist attack, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sends Dr. Ephraim Goodweather, an epidemiologist who heads the rapid-response team of the "Canary Project," aboard to investigate. Most of the passengers and crew are found dead under mysterious circumstances; only four survive, along with a mysterious wooden box shaped like a huge black coffin. Ephraim and his partner Nora Martinez treat it all as an infectious disease—drawing blood, imposing quarantine, tracing the chain of infection—while Abraham Setrakian, an old pawnshop owner in Spanish Harlem, recognizes something far older from the tiny wounds on the victims' necks and the emblem on the box: he saw it during World War II at the Treblinka concentration camp. A "vampire" virus spread by blood and hosted by corpses begins to spread through Manhattan; the dead rise, and the bitten gradually lose their humanity. The novel is built on a cool, precise skeleton of medical and epidemiological procedure, shifting between Nazi historical memory, Eastern European folklore, and religious metaphor to shape a vampire utterly different from the traditional beautiful aristocrat—one that spreads like a plague. Author Guillermo del Toro, director of Pan's Labyrinth and Pacific Rim, injects a cinematic visual sense into the text; Chuck Hogan tightens the pace with a crime novelist's craft. Published in the United States in 2010, the book reached multiple bestseller lists, and in 2014 FX adapted it into a television series of the same name.Editor's review
如果让《潘神的迷宫》的导演去写一部病毒学教科书式的吸血鬼小说，大约就是这本书的样子。德尔·托罗把他对吸血鬼历史、仪式与宗教象征的研究全部倾注进去，与推理小说家查克·霍根联手，造出一个“吸血鬼不是贵族，而是传染病”的世界：机场、隔离区、尸检台、CDC的简报会，恐怖感来自流程的严谨与系统的失效，而非单纯的獠牙。全书叙事语言冷静、精准、简洁，铺线众多却毫不凌乱，场面描写不靠血腥堆叠，寒意却一层层渗进来。漓江出版社的简体中文版由叶妍伶翻译，是这套三部曲在中国大陆的首次完整引进。对于看过美剧的读者，原著补足了剧中难以展开的历史支线与人物动机；对于没看过的读者，它是一部可以独立成立的类型小说佳作。Who it's for
A good fit for
- 喜欢吸血鬼、哥特与末日题材的类型小说读者
- 看过FX剧集《血族》，想回头读原著的观众
- 对德尔·托罗电影美学有兴趣的影迷
- 能接受生物恐怖与医学描写、偏好冷峻叙事的读者
Not a good fit for
- 期待浪漫吸血鬼言情（如俊美高贵贵族设定）的读者
- 对尸体、血液、传染病描写较为敏感的读者
- 偏好轻松幽默、快节奏短篇的读者
Reading tips
- 先不看剧集，按原著顺序读完三部曲《侵袭》《坠落》《永夜》，避免剧透后失去悬念。
- 留意书中关于集中营回忆与东欧民间传说的段落，它们是理解血族起源的关键伏笔。
- 把本书当作一部传染病调查实录来读，关注CDC的应对流程，恐怖感会成倍放大。
- 读完后可对照FX同名剧集第一季，观察编剧如何取舍原著中的多点视角。
About the publisher
Lijiang Publishing House China · Founded in 1980Lijiang Publishing House focuses on Chinese and foreign literature, humanities and social sciences, cultural life, and parent-child education, and is particularly known for translating and introducing foreign literature; its "Nobel Prize in Literature Laureates Series" has had a lasting influence on readers. Judging from the 193 books in the collection, the press publishes modern prose classics such as Lu Xun's Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk, ancient poetry and Eastern philosophy texts including Qu Yuan's The Songs of Chu and the works of Xunzi, educational works such as De Amicis's Cuore, and philosophy titles such as The Origin and Goal of History. Its authors include well-known Chinese and foreign writers and scholars such as Lu Xun, Qu Yuan, Xunzi, Hu Dalei, and Xia Mianzun. Overall, the press balances the organization of classic texts with the introduction of foreign works, forming a publishing profile that gives equal weight to literature, philosophy, and education.
FAQ
这本书和FX美剧《血族》是什么关系？
小说《血族》2010年在美国出版，是电视剧的原著。剧集由德尔·托罗参与执导，2014年7月开播，小说简体中文版也在同年由漓江出版社推出。两者人物框架一致，但剧集对部分角色和支线有较大改编，原著更侧重历史线索与医学程序。《血族》一共有几部，本书是第一本吗？
三部曲分别为《血族1：侵袭》（The Strain）、《血族2：坠落》（The Fall）和《血族3：永夜》（The Night Eternal），简体中文版均由漓江出版社出版、叶妍伶翻译。本书是三部曲的第一部。没看过前作能直接读吗？
可以。本书本身就是系列的开端，从航班事件写起，不需要前置阅读。但读完后建议按顺序继续第二、三部，否则后续的《光之熄》与昆蓝等线索会难以衔接。书里的吸血鬼和常见设定有什么不同？
这里的吸血鬼更接近一种寄生生物：通过血液与体液传播，感染后有明确的病理进程，宿主逐渐丧失人格。作者刻意反写传统的优雅贵族形象，把它还原为瘟疫与流行病学问题。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
Guillermo del Toro AuthorGuillermo del Toro is an author known for horror and thriller fiction, whose works are often grouped in Chinese book listings under categories such as premium fiction, horror and thriller, and foreign literature. The database contains twenty-six of his works, with the representative ones being the Strain series, including The Strain, Volume 1; The Strain 1: Invasion; The Strain Part Two: Fallen, Episode 9; The Strain 3: Night Eternal; and The Strain. These works show that he excels at using vampires, plagues, and dark creatures as core elements to create an oppressive and eerie atmosphere, with narratives that combine the tight pacing of genre fiction with literary attention to detail. As public information is limited, his full biography, nationality, and dates of birth and death cannot be confirmed; this introduction is based only on the works and category information available in the database.
Chuck Hogan AuthorChuck Hogan is an English-language author known for horror and thriller fiction. With 26 of his works available in Chinese in our catalog, his writing has already received a notable amount of translation for Chinese readers. He is best known for the collaborative series The Strain with Guillermo del Toro, including The Strain 1: The Invasion, The Strain 3: The Night Eternal, and other editions, which unfold around a vampire epidemic and combine the tension and visual pacing of genre fiction. Beyond The Strain, his works are often grouped under premium fiction, horror and thriller, literature, and foreign literature, suggesting that his writing pursues readability while retaining some literary quality. Because public information is limited, details of his biography and full body of work remain difficult to describe, but the existing translations show that he is skilled at building suspense and a chilling atmosphere through tight narration, giving him a presence among readers of genre fiction.