اداره‌ی جبران عمر

by Ariel Dorfman, محمد قصاع (مترجم)

“I have created for each of you a fate, one tailored specifically for your needs and desires. Each of you has a defining moment—not before, not after—when a wrong turn or decision led to the disastrous outcome that you and I mourn. To isolate that malignant moment is an exacting, exhaustive process, which only the most well-trained and competent professionals, armed with the most sophisticated of predictive models and processing power, can accomplish. You can put your trust in me, as you would in an expert surgeon, a surgeon of the soul.”

On a distant planet overlooking Earth, the nameless protagonist of The Compensation Bureau is one of a team of Actuaries at work on the innovative Lazarus Project. Conceived in response to the shocking violence observed in humankind, the project identifies people who have wrongfully died at the hands of others—whether victims of war, hate crimes, or random brutality—and attempts to compensate for the cruelty and pain they faced in life and death.

But balancing the accounts for the sufferings and wrongdoings of humanity proves hardly a clinical exercise. The Actuary soon finds himself personally invested in the project’s mission, and the goals of the project itself are complicated as the fate of Earth’s inhabitants becomes more uncertain. The Compensation Bureau explores the power of individual and collective action, from a writer hailed by The Washington Post as “a world-novelist of the first category.”

Genres: Fiction

70 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2021

About the author

Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.

Reviews

[Moshtagh hosein · Rating 1 out of 5]

داستان تخیلی ناجالبی بود ولی خب دورفمن نوشته کرده بود.

[Rima Delparish · Rating 4 out of 5]

«من کودکانی را دیدم که در مراسم وردخوانی به آتش انداخته شدند. زنانی را دیدم که به خاطر عشق ورزیدن سنگباران شدند و زنانی را دیدم که به جرم عشق نورزیدن به صاحبانی که آنها را خریده بودند، به قتل رسیدند. مردانی را دیدم که گردن‌زده شدند و مردانی که از پرتگاه‌ها به پایین پرت شدند و مردانی که قلب‌هایشان را از سینه بیرون کشیدند و مردانی که در انفجار تکه تکه شدند و مردانی که به تخته ها میخکوب می‌شدند و امعا و احشایشان به روی زمین ریخته می‌شد و مردان و زنان و بچه ها و پیر و جوان را دیدم که از گرسنگی رنج می‌کشیدند. انسانهایی که غرقشان می‌کردند. زبانشان را می‌بریدند و اندامهایشان را قطع میکردند‌ اجسادی که مانند میوه از درختان آویزان بودند؛ من اینها را دیدم؛ مادرانی که پسرانشان را دفن می‌کردند و پسرانی که پدرانشان را دفن می‌کردند و پدرانی که غرق در اندوه خود را می‌کشتند....»
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/* در یک سیاره دیگر، در قسمتی دیگر از این جهان، موجوداتی فرازمینی وجود دارند که مسئولیت آن‌ها جبران عمر افرادی‌ست که در کره زمین به شکل بی‌رحمانه‌ای مرده‌اند و شایسته مرگ بهتری بودند، به آن‌ها فرصت زندگی دوباره و مرگ برازنده‌ای برای این آسیب‌دیدگان رقم می‌زنند. اما در این بین قوانین سفت و سختی برای این موجودات وجود دارد که اگر قوانین را زیر پا بگذارند به ‌جای دیگری تبعید می‌شوند.
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/* آریل دورفمان، نویسنده کتاب حاضر روزنامه‌نگار و فعال حقوق بشر آرژانتینی است که در این داستان کوتاه و نمادین از نیاز انسان‌ها به عشق و محبت و زندگی مسالمت‌آمیز و ریشه خشم می‌پردازد و باور دارد که روزی بشریت نابود می‌شود پس خوبه که در کنار یکدیگر به خوبی زندگی‌ کنیم.

من این کتاب رو دوست داشتم و باهاش ارتباط گرفتم و بنظرم خیلی عمیقه؛ با استفاده از رئالیسم جادویی درباره موضوع مهمی تو کتاب صحبت کرده.

[Sara]

در کودکی، اولین کتاب داستان «واقعی» که خوندم «مرد مصور» با ترجمه‌ی محمد قصاع بود. برام جالب بود که دورفمن سای-فای نوشته، و می‌خواستم ببینم چی نوشته. برای این دو دلیل کتاب رو خوندم. و دیدم که همون مرگ و دوشیزه، فقط در بستر کهکشانی بود. کاملاً مشخص بود که نوشته‌ی دورفمنه.

[jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

so we asked ourselves if the majority of humans were not, after all, both victims and victimizers, benefactors of their fellows at one point and a scourge to them at a later date?

a slim parable of "love in the time of apocalypse," argentine/chilean ex-pat author ariel dorfman's the compensation bureau imagines a team of otherworldly "actuaries" charged with balancing human suffering on earth. dorfman's morally philosophizing novella creatively confronts our species' self-destructiveness and cruelty. a touch too didactic, the compensation bureau is more interesting as an idea than it is a work of fiction. while lacking the force and intensity of some of his other works — most especially death and the maiden — the compensation bureau shows dorfman admirably still envisioning a better world, offering a plea in prose for planetary peace.

altering the sage of humanity, inventing alternatives to mayhem and holocausts, massacres and invasions, not only gave satisfaction to the victims and verisimilitude to the outcomes we imagined for them, but spawned a stockpile of historical prototypes for each period and genocidal disaster that actuaries could recur to and then apply.

[Robert Hamilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Given the very positive things I've heard about Dorfman, I expected to like this book more than I did. Don't get me wrong, as a high-concept thought experiment, it works well; the basic idea is compelling, the speculative elements are not overly elaborated, and at many points, the book is moving—possibly because of, and possibly in spite of, its very dessicated, almost characterless quality. Its ending cuts effectively against the Grand-Opéra trappings of most dystopian fiction, and against the whole concept of messianism and prophetic function. All of that makes this book well worth a read, especially as it weighs in at a slim 100 pages or so, with wide spacing between lines.

I was surprised more by the style than anything else. In a slim volume like this, where style is almost the whole of what you've got to work with (the characters being almost pure abstractions in all cases), small solecisms tend to stand out. And there are plenty in these pages; "flaunt" is habitually used for "flout," "it's" substitutes for "its," and overall, the sentences tend to be a little tortuous, a bit grammatically misleading: question marks fail to materialize, clauses restart after commas, and it's not uncommon to need a double-take to be certain one has caught the meaning of one of these sentences.

Additionally, the way in which the novella's basic situation is presented is oddly dry and expository, with two italicized reports of a commission of inquiry intruding to provide backstory. All right, but even our nameless narrator tends toward a bureaucratic formality. Of course, that's implied by the title and concept, but since much of the narrative revolves around the change this character has experienced, one is left wishing for more connection, more vividness. "The taste of an apple" is used a few times as a kind of shorthand glyph for the human experience, which the astral beings who comprise most of the dramatis personae do not usually get to enjoy (or suffer). And that's really all we get—of the character's transformation, of a kind of forbidden love that is alluded to rather than narrated.

This is, in short, kind of a lyric novella rather than one that is narrative-driven, but even more than that, it is a transcript of a concept (and in a note at the end, Dorfman himself claims that he felt like he was taking dictation from another dimension). The concept is laudable and high-tragic, but in the end, not original enough or differentiated enough from other dystopias to function effectively all on its own, with very few of the other trappings of narrative art (beautiful style, thickly-characterized figures, etc.) to, ahem, compensate.

[Hanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting concept, but so difficult to get through with all of the comma splices! I started to wonder if it was done purposely, to create a relentless, driving sort of effect?

[Pardis · Rating 1 out of 5]

رمان ترکیبی از فانتزی، عشق، پرسش‌های اخلاقی و پیش‌بینی و هشدار درباره‌ی فروپاشی کره‌ی زمین است

[Sadafna · Rating 1 out of 5]

ایده‌ی اولیه بسیاررر جالب، ادامه داستان و پردازش صفررر.

[Fatemeh HokmAbadi · Rating 3 out of 5]

چقدر ایده‌ی این کتاب تازه و جالب بود برام. ولی خب کوتاه بود. می‌تونست طولانی تر باشه و با جزییات بیشتری بپردازه به موضوع…