Editor's words
New Year's Day 2021 has passed, and all publishing units are reviewing and summarizing the achievements of the past year. What books can be remembered and circulated and even received praise and honor is an unavoidable topic. In order to show readers and friends the book publishing achievements of shanghai publishing units in 2020, Shuxiang Shanghai specially planned to launch the "2020 Shanghai Publishing Units Top Ten Annual Books" activity. We sincerely invite all publishing units in Shanghai to recommend the ten most valuable books of the year to share with readers. Readers and friends are also welcome to join us in finding good books in Shanghai that are worth reading and re-reading.
This issue brings ten good books of Shanghai Translation Publishing House in 2020, welcome to taste.
01
"Normal Man"
[Ireland] by Sally Rooney
Translated by Zhong Na
Shanghai Translation Publishing House
Cornell and Marianne grew up in a small town in the west of Ireland. At school, Cornell was popular, while Marianne was seen as a freak and alone. However, a heart-pounding conversation changed the relationship between the two and their future lives.
A year later, the two came to Trinity University in Dublin to study and were reunited at a party. At this time, Marianne was active in the university social circle, and Cornell became a marginal person, shy and lacking self-confidence. During the years of college, the two interacted with each other individually, but there always seemed to be an irresistible magnetism that brought the two closer to each other. They are like "two plants in a pot of soil, growing around each other, growing crookedly and twisted to make room, forming a certain incredible posture". Finally, as she moves toward self-destruction and he looks elsewhere for meaning in life, how exactly do they save each other? How can one change another person, and how can one speak one's inner feelings so that others can truly perceive them?
Following "Chat History", Sally Rooney, in her second novel, Normal Man, uses her excellent psychological description and gentle and delicate writing to explore delicate class relationships, the passion, fragility and crisis of first love, the complex entanglement of family relations and friendships, injecting new strength into contemporary fiction.
02
Testimony
[Plus] by Margaret Atwood
So translated
Fifteen years after the end of The Handmaid's Tale, gilead's rule showed signs of decay from within. At a critical moment when great changes are approaching, the fates of three women from different identities and backgrounds begin to intertwine, which in turn leads to subversive consequences. They witness the changes of history from their own perspectives, and the three different narrative voices construct a grander and more open space-time, revealing for the first time the secret behind the overthrow of Gilead. The past and the future gradually overlap in the narrative, and the truth is presented to the reader in a stunning way.
03
"A Machine Like Me"
By Ian McEwan
Translated by Zhou Xiaojin
In 1982, in London, England, parallel to the world, artificial intelligence research had far exceeded our current level of development. Under Thatcher's leadership, Britain was defeated in the Falklands War and the national uproar came as Tony Benn was elected Prime Minister. Turing, the "father of artificial intelligence," did not commit suicide either, and McEwan gave Turing the life he deserved, rather than being tried, imprisoned, or committing suicide. Turing lived a long life, living in the esteem of the world, and his works created a technological miracle.
Meanwhile, Charlie, a 32-year-old Londoner, began two new relationships: first, he fell in love with his upstairs neighbor Miranda; second, he used his inheritance to buy a new humanoid robot "Adam". "Adam" has the intelligence and appearance of fake reality, and can complete realistic and natural movements and expression changes. With Miranda's help, Charlie reinvents the character of "Adam", and a strange triangular relationship gradually takes shape... Things are slowly starting to get out of hand as well.
In his novel, McEwen explores the difference between humans and artificial intelligence, what exactly makes us human—our outward behavior or our inner life? Can robots understand the human heart? For technologies beyond the control of humans, this novel will bring the reader deep thinking.
04
My Friend Apollo
By Sigrid Nunez
Translated by Yao Junwei
The main line of the novel is a giant dog known as the Apollo of the dogs, the Great Dane and the protagonist know each other, telling the story of the mutualization of loss and rebirth. The heroine's mentor (who is also a lover) commits suicide, leaving behind three wives with different mentalities, and a wordless mourner, the Great Dane Apollo. The Great Dane no longer holds any hope of seeing its owner again. It doesn't kill itself, it doesn't cry, but there are all kinds of signs that it could and really can collapse.
In the days when she and the three intransigent ladies who performed to the occasion recall the various truths that were taken away and covered up by the dead, the heroine and the Great Dane began to accept and protect each other. The tacit understanding and love that gradually sprouted between the two became the best annotation to faith and friendship, so that the heroine herself was reborn.
The novel has many branches going hand in hand, involving many hot issues such as war trauma, sexism, marriage ethics, and the "Me Too" movement, and is full of contemporary intellectual women's exploration, torture and self-examination of their own living environment and feminist issues. The experimental method used in the story structure of the work unexpectedly realizes the great reversal of the plot, giving people a unique sense of reading drama.
05
Bloodspring: Ebola's Past, Present and Future
By Richard Preston
Translated by Yao Xianghui
The 2014 Ebola outbreak showed that "the world is ill-prepared to respond to a severe influenza pandemic and a global public health emergency," ACCORDING TO.
The Ebola epidemic is more like part of a pattern, a shockwave created by a new virus that jumps out of the ecosystem. The virus multiplies itself in the population, devours life, encounters resistance from the human species, and finally ends up. However, what will be the next shock wave?
As the past fades into the future, I intend to predict a global outbreak caused by some new biosafety level four virus that can spread from person to person through the air without a vaccine, which cannot be cured by modern medicine, and which, in terms, is a level four event.
A recent study by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health showed that all U.S. hospitals combined have only 142 red-zone beds that can accommodate patients with haemorrhagic fever viruses (e.g., Ebola), and fewer than 400 red-zone beds for patients at high risk of airborne transmission.
Therefore, if there is a fourth-level incident, the entire United States will have only 542 red-zone beds.
We must ask the question: If a new fourth-grade virus spreads to a million-level population in North America or any continent, will hospitals have the capacity to handle so many patients and care for them? If the number of infected people exceeds one million, will epidemiologists have the ability to track and break the chain of transmission?
Now, the warriors guarding the gates of the viral circle understand that the enemy they face is terriblely powerful, and this war is bound to be protracted. Many of their weapons will eventually fail, but others will come into play. Humans have a certain advantage in this battle, possessing certain elements that the virus lacks, including self-awareness, the ability to fight in teams, and a willingness to sacrifice.
Since viruses can mutate, we can also change.
06
Little Detective Agatha (Series 1) (10 volumes)
By Steve Stevenson
Huang Xin Zhao Xiangyang et al. translations
The "Little Detective Agatha" series is the masterpiece of steve Steve Steveson, a well-known Italian children's literature writer, including "The Curse of the Pharaoh", "Pearl of Bengal", "Sword of the King of Scotland", "Niagara Falls Theft", "Murder of the Eiffel Tower", "Treasure of the Bermuda Triangle", "Crown of the Doge of Venice", "Poachers on the Kenyan Steppes", "Hollywood Mysteries", "Cruise Ships on the Norwegian Sea" and other ten books. The series tells the story of the adventures of twelve-year-old Agatha Mistri and her brother Larry Mistri on a journey around the world, from anecdotes to unsolved mysteries to mysterious and bizarre cases... The series is uniquely conceived, combining traveling the world and solving cases, not only thrilling and gripping, but also contains a lot of geographical, historical, and humanistic knowledge, which is a very worthwhile children's literature work.
07
Prague Cemetery
By Umberto Echo
Translated by Wen Zheng lou yijun
Umberto Echo heavyweight novel. Set in nineteenth-century Europe, the protagonist Simonini wakes up and finds himself forgotten who he is, and the panic and uneasiness of amnesia makes him decide to imitate Freud and perform spiritual healing on himself. Through the way of writing a diary, he gradually recovered from the fog of memory that lonely childhood, the young man who was beaten by life, and after becoming the eyeliner of the secret police, how he gradually became a person who was treacherous, betrayed his friends at will, and had no moral bottom line. He was used by all sides, intercourse between the secret police, the church, conspirators, revolutionaries and royal literati, spying in half of Europe, plotting assassinations, forging documents against Jews and Freemasons, and seeking money. But it was he, such an inconspicuous little man, who became the guide to the political and historical development of Europe throughout the second half of the 19th century.
08
"I Quit My Job at Fifty"
[Japanese] by Emiko Inagaki
Translated by Guo Li
"Fifty Years Old, I Resigned" describes the author Emiko Inagaki's life as a turning point in her life, and the before and after she quit her job to start a new life journey, and what she thought in the process. Emiko Inagaki, who lived in an era of rapid economic growth, never doubted the golden formula of "good school", "good job" and "good life", and after graduating from college, she joined the Asahi Shimbun and had a stable income, a job, and a generous pension that came with it, but at the age of forty, she suddenly had the idea of "resigning at the age of fifty".
After this idea came to mind, she began to rethink the relationship between "money" and "work" and life, and finally at the age of fifty, Ms. Inagaki resolutely quit her job in the confused eyes of the people around her. After leaving the company system, Ms. Inagaki was able to re-examine life and work as a free person, and began to try to save electricity for only 200 yen per month, reflecting on the restrictions imposed on individuals in Japan of a "company-type society" and the fact that "Japan established by black-hearted employees" and other facts that she had not noticed or become accustomed to before.
By resigning, standing against companies and even state institutions, Ms. Inagaki saw things that she wouldn't have noticed before. Japan, a "company-type society", the struggles of Japanese companies after the bubble economy, the consumer economy that tends to be fraudulent, the inconveniences of the elderly in the information society, the existence of a lifestyle that can be happy without money... Every bit sparked her to think.
The book, together with the preface and afterword, consists of eight chapters, which tell her story step by step from the idea of resignation to her daily life after resignation, and Emiko Inagaki's inspirational and humorous writing is laughable and thought-provoking to read.
09
100 Views of Tokyo
[Day] by Naoki Yoshiyoshi
Translated by Mao Danqing
"100 Views of Tokyo" is composed of 100 short essays, and Naoki Yoshiki records his eighteen-year experience from Osaka to Tokyo to work for his dream of being an artist, and in the past ten years, he has traveled through the big and small corners of Tokyo, and the memories and moods associated with it are dotted in it. "Tokyo 100 Views" has a strong personal color of Yoshiyoshi, because the writer Osamu Dazai, who worships Yoshi, has a work of "Eight Views of Tokyo", so it takes the name of "Tokyo 100 Views".
Compared with the scenery of a certain place at a certain time, Hatyoshi focused his writing on the specific state of mind at that time, so he wrote about Inokashira Park, and Yoshigi did not write about the famous cherry blossom viewing resort but about the foreign missionaries who chased after him and thought that "Naoki Hatyoshi" was dead, as well as the old woman who sat by the pond and suggested that Yuki go to be a cowherd; wrote about the surging crowds and fashionable faces of Harajuku, Shinjuku, and Shimokitazawa, and laughed at himself, "In the face of Tokyo, I will always be a countryman." Odaiba and The Brilliant Fireworks blooming in the night sky of The Harumi, the lively izakayas of Kichijoji Harmonica Street, the Ginza Old Shop Bar where Osamu Dazai left famous photos, the dusk and sunset of Musashino, the deserted streets that ran late at night with friends... The details and prototypes of various scenes in "Sparks" can find shadows in "Tokyo 100 Views", the location and the characters are intertwined, the infinite possibilities of the city and the personal have nowhere to hide, the excessive self-awareness and the eternal tug-of-war between catering to the world, "Tokyo 100 Views" can be said to be Naoki Yoshiyoshi's "Spark" The origin of.
Youji's brushstrokes are simple, sincere and quite delicate, these short essays have initially demonstrated his later extraordinary talent in funny and reading and writing, but the days before becoming famous are always cruel and struggling, and the experience of leaving home alone is also true and illusory in Youji's pen, and his sensitive and slender personality is undoubtedly revealed in the book, which is touching and funny to read, and quite resonant.
10
"Chinese Excellent Traditional Culture Inheritance Series" (English version)
Zhang Ciyun sighed
The National Publishing Fund project "Chinese Excellent Traditional Culture Inheritance Series" (English version) is published by Shanghai Translation Publishing House. The series is written by Mr. Zhang Ciyun, a senior English-speaking media person in China, and is divided into six volumes: "Chinese Mythological Stories and Thirty-Six Plans", "Chinese Historical Writings", "Chinese Idioms Stories", "Appreciation of Famous Paintings of Chinese Dynasties", "Chinese Historical Figures", and "Ancient Chinese Architecture and Their Stories". As the first story reader in China to introduce traditional Chinese culture in English, the series selects the most representative, typical and interesting stories in the vast Chinese cultural themes, basically covering the main contents of traditional Chinese culture.
In these six volumes, Mr. Zhang Ciyun summarizes the intricate events and characters into readable stories, including myths and stories that explore the origin and belief of mankind, the "Thirty-Six Plans" that combine the wisdom and strategy of the ancients, the historical writings that condense brilliant civilizations, historical figures with far-reaching influence, idiomatic stories that condense the essence of Chinese, Chinese paintings with long meanings, and ancient buildings with ingenious craftsmanship. The content of the series is easy to understand, the language is simple and fluent, the words are accurate, and the articles are written in one go. In order to more vividly display the characters and plot, the special designers invited by Shanghai Translation Publishing House to draw illustrations for each article, which is both lively and lively, without losing traditional characteristics. In order to preserve the beauty and detail of the long cross-page drawing as much as possible, the series adopts the unconventional 24-folio size, and the bare ridge color line binding can be directly flattened, which greatly enhances the reading perception and fun. In addition, the unique hollowing process and the design of the illustration elements are exquisite, highlighting the elegant national style and artistic conception, which makes people shine.
Source: Shanghai Translation Publishing House
Editor: Xu Xiangguo