华人女作家获弗兰克奥康纳奖

燕鸥and小蟹UID: 199804

来源：http://culture.163.com/05/0930/10/1UT16N8100280003.html




李翊云  　　在北京长大、1998年才开始用英文写作的32岁女作家李翊云，战胜了其他五位各国候选作家，于9月25日赢得了首届弗兰克。奥康纳国际短篇小说奖，并得到高达5万英镑（约合人民币72万元）的奖金，这也是目前世界上奖金最高的短篇小说奖。　　李得奖的作品是她的短篇集《千年敬祈》（A Thousand Years of Good Prayers），9月20日才由兰登书屋在美国出版，这也是她出版的首本书。小说从熙熙攘攘的北京，荒凉辽阔的内蒙，一直写到了大洋彼岸的芝加哥。　　李在北京长大，后入北京大学，1996年赴美学习生物学，两年后才开始用英文写作。爱荷华大学的校友录上说她刚到美国时，别说英文，连中文小说也没写过。她的英文水平读报纸还行，读小说便难讲了。但她在一个偶然的机会，进了爱荷华大学著名的“作家工作室”学习写作，仅四年后，自2002年起便陆续在多家文艺名刊——如《巴黎评论》、《纽约客》和《葛底斯堡评论》上发表短篇小说，并获得首届普利姆顿新人奖。　　我最早读到的李翊云小说，是2003年年底刊于《纽约客》的《多余》（Extra）。小说前半部分是个典型的祥林嫂式的故事，写51岁的退休女工林奶奶嫁给了76岁的老唐，两个月后老唐病死，林奶奶分文未得，被唐家的两个儿子赶出家门，不得已到郊区的贵族学校里当清洁工。小说不长，但令人印象深刻，至今对林奶奶给老唐洗澡那一段描写记忆犹新。　　中国学生出国后，边学英语，边写小说，而后一举成名者，哈金是近年来最成功之人，李翊云紧随其后。这样的例子，有一个是新鲜，如今有了两个，就该成为现象了。为什么在国内不写到国外写？为什么不用汉语用外语写？为什么非母语反而成了写作的动力而非阻力？可以研究一下。　　弗兰克。奥康纳奖以爱尔兰最著名的短篇小说作家奥康纳命名，用以奖励过去一年中以英文出版的短篇小说集，入围者不限国别。今年的奖项由获得2005年“欧洲文化之都”称号的科克市主办。

燕鸥and小蟹UID: 199804

http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/ ... 3123&view=print

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
Stories
Yiyun Li
Hardcover | Fiction - Short Stories (single author) | Random House | September 2005 | 1-4000-6312-4 | $21.95

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Brilliant and original, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers introduces a remarkable new writer whose breathtaking stories are set in China and among Chinese Americans in the United States. In this rich, astonishing collection, Yiyun Li illuminates how mythology, politics, history, and culture intersect with personality to create fate. From the bustling heart of Beijing, to a fast-food restaurant in Chicago, to the barren expanse of Inner Mongolia, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers reveals worlds both foreign and familiar, with heartbreaking honesty and in beautiful prose.

“Immortality,” winner of The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for new writers, tells the story of a young man who bears a striking resemblance to a dictator and so finds a calling to immortality. In “The Princess of Nebraska,” a man and a woman who were both in love with a young actor in China meet again in America and try to reconcile the lost love with their new lives.

“After a Life” illuminates the vagaries of marriage, parenthood, and gender, unfolding the story of a couple who keep a daughter hidden from the world. And in “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” in which a man visits America for the first time to see his recently divorced daughter, only to discover that all is not as it seems, Li boldly explores the effects of communism on language, faith, and an entire people, underlining transformation in its many meanings and incarnations.

These and other daring stories form a mesmerizing tapestry of revelatory fiction by an unforgettable writer.

QUOTES

“Yiyun Li is a true storyteller. Great stories offer us the details of life on the riverbanks: birth, family, dinner, and love, all framing the powerful flow of terror, death, political change, the river itself. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is as grand an epic and as tenderly private as a reader could wish.”
–Amy Bloom, author of Come to Me

“With great tenderness, tact, and humor, these stories open a world that is culturally remote from us, and at the same time as humanly intimate as if its people were our own family and their thoughts the thoughts that lie nearest our own hearts.”
–Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead and Housekeeping

“This extraordinary collection reminds you just how big a short story can be. With wit, ruthlessness, and an understanding of human nature–its grand follies, private sorrows, and petty dreams–A Thousand Years of Good Prayers may remind you of Flannery O’Connor, though Li is an original. Read this book and marvel at a writer both at the height of her powers and at the start of a brilliant career.”
–Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Giant’s House

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and attended Peking University. She came to the United States in 1996 to study medicine and started writing two years later. After receiving a master’s degree in immunology from the University of Iowa, she attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received an MFA. Li is a recipient of The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for new writers. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Glimmer Train, and Prospect. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband and their two sons.