【经济学人】迷雾重重|2017.04.22|总第884期

Fever Dream. By SamantaSchweblin. Translated by Megan McDowell. Riverhead Books; 192 pages; $25. Oneworld; £12.99.

《热夜之梦》作者萨曼塔·施维伯林（Samanta  Schweblin），译者梅根·麦克杜威尔（ Megan McDowell），河源出版社，192页，25美元，寰宇一家，12.99英镑。

THIS small debut novel packs a mighty, and lingering, punch. In “Fever Dream” Samanta Schweblin (pictured), an Argentinian short-story writer based in Berlin, wraps contemporary nightmares, both private and public, into a compact, but explosive, package. MsSchweblin delivers a skin-prickling masterclass in dread and suspense. Sentence by sinister sentence, she instils and then intensifies “a terrifying feeling of doom”.

这本“新秀”小说里有豪情、婉转、还可以让人们产生共鸣。萨曼塔·施维伯林（SamantaSchweblin）（如图）是柏林的一名短篇小说作家。在《热夜之梦》中，他把个人和公众的时代梦魇塞进了一个紧密却又容易炸裂的包裹中。施维伯林在恐怖悬疑的剧情中加入了一个纹身大师。由原罪来判罪，她逐步加强了“恐怖厄运的感觉”

In rural Argentina, a frightened holidaymaker named Amanda lies dying in a clinic.（读者试译句） David, the son of a local woman called Carla, interrogates the delirious patient about the events that have led her into this place of “danger and madness”. Amanda, in turn, recounts conversations with Carla that reveal, in fragments, a terrible tale. And what has become of Nina, Amanda’s daughter, whom her mother so fearfully kept within “rescue distance”? Convulsed by doubt and pain, she torments herself: “Was I a bad mother? Is it something I caused?”

（期待您的翻译，明天将会有针对这句话的长难句解析哟~） 大卫是当地一个名叫卡拉的女子的儿子，他问是什么事情让阿曼达去了那危险又疯狂之地。相应地，阿曼达叙述和卡拉的对话展示了一个小片段的恐怖故事。阿曼达的女儿妮娜变成了什么 ，她的母亲为何如此恐惧的保持在“救援距离”之内？在怀疑和伤痛中惊厥，她责问自己“我是一个坏母亲吗？这些是我造成的吗？”

In whispered snatches, the reader is told of poisonings and contaminations, of children hideously harmed, a blighted community and “something small and invisible that has ruined everything”. Around this double dialogue, perspectives shift and blur. Reality shimmers like the summer haze over the chemically enhanced green of the surrounding soya fields. No “rescue distance”, the reader learns, can ever be small enough for safety. As David says (or, perhaps, as Amanda hallucinates him saying): “Whatever has cursed this town for the past ten years is now inside me.”

通过低声叙述的片段，读者可以看到投毒事件，儿童遭受可怕的伤害，一个混乱的社会及“某样微小而不可见的事物摧毁着这一切”。通过这两段对话，视角发生转移且变得模糊不清。真相犹如夏季迷雾笼罩在洒遍化学物质的绿油油的大豆田般闪烁其间。读者知道，（这其间）压根就没有精确的相对安全的“援救距离”。正如David所说（又或者是正如Amanda hallucinates自己所说）：“这座小镇过去十年里所被诅咒的一切都取决于我。”

With virtuoso skill, well served in Megan McDowell’s finely textured translation, MsSchweblin fuses a study in maternal anxiety with an ecological horror story. She refracts both strands through the eerie prism of her narrative, almost as if Henry James had scripted a disaster movie about toxic agribusiness. The author has linked her “motionless scourge” to the pesticide-blasted prairies of Argentina. And then there is the abyss of a mother’s anguish. “My head”, Carla recalls, “was a tangled mess of guilt and terror.” As MsSchweblin lands her punch, so will the reader’s be.

通过大师般的技巧及梅根·麦克杜威尔（Megan McDowell）恰到好处地翻译，施维伯林将一个母亲的焦虑作为导火线引发了一个生态恐怖故事。通过她的一个个怪诞的故事折射出两个方面，仿若亨利·詹姆斯（Henry James）写过的一个关于毒剂农业综合企业的剧本一般。作者将自己描写的“天灾”与化学药剂泛滥的阿根廷草原联系在一起。再者就是母亲焦虑的深渊。卡拉回忆道“我的脑子里，罪恶感与恐惧交织在一起。”也正如施维伯林所描述的，读者也同样会有这种感受。

翻译 ▍毛毛 似水流年 小情人

审核 ▍小情人

图文编辑 ▍毛毛

责任编辑 ▍毛毛