剑桥的陌生人

by Lydia H. Liu, 刘禾

刘禾用一种实验性的写作（融写实、虚构、历史于一个文体），把她追踪和研究纳博科夫自传中一个叫“奈斯毕特”（Nesbit）的人物原型的过程呈现出来，背后的大关怀是20世纪上半叶（甚至可以聚焦到1919年）因为各种原因汇聚到剑桥的知识分子，他们不为人知的诸多面向、生活细节、相互关联和价值选择，尤其是“剑桥帮”的左翼科学家团体。全书诸多类似八卦的各种闲笔，晕染的是一种20世纪上半叶的思想氛围和知识分子非左即右的方向选择。

250 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2014

About the author

Lydia H. Liu 劉禾 is the W.T. Tam Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She teaches in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. Professor Liu also holds a joint professorship at the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences at Tsinghua University 清華大學 in Beijing.

(from http://www.columbia.edu/~ll2410/)

Reviews

[Chaniya Yang · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Parodic Detective Fiction + Prose Textual Analysis and Scholarly Examination" , a little book that combines the elements I'm almost most obsessed with, so it's no surprise that it's highly personal and readable.

What struck me was the offhandedness of the expressions that popped up between the lines - one of the handiwork of parody, roughly - and the combination of such experimentation with the metaphorical style of the book as a whole narrative can't help but be viewed as one of the most subtle and creative experiments in writing.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

很有意思的一本書。以仿偵探小說形式（仿納博科夫的The Real Life of Sebastian Knight)這樣非學術式文體展示學術考據的資料，揭示二十世紀上半葉劍橋的知識分子群像，尤其是當時的左冀知識分子群體。故事以求證納博科夫回憶錄中提及的一個隱名人物Nesbit為線索，串聯出當時劍橋知識分子群體，更是聚焦於《1984》作者奧威爾為冷戰時期英國外交部屬下信息調查部（IRD)提供的左冀黑名單。在那樣一個被標籤站隊的時期，不同的知識分子如何選擇理想與人生，又如何被政治選擇而走向不同的人生路徑。