9. Ian McEwan, Atonement (2001)
伊恩·麥克尤恩《贖罪》，（2001年）

The novel opens on a summer day in 1935, when 13-year-old Briony shows her mother a play she's written to perform with her three cousins the next evening. "Briony was hardly to know it then, but this was the project's highest point of fulfillment," McEwan writes. "Nothing came near it for satisfaction, all else was dreams and frustration."That evening, Briony witnesses her 15-year-old cousin Lola being assaulted in the darkened woods. Her testimony implicates Robbie, her sister Cecilia's boyfriend from Cambridge and son of the family house maid, and he is jailed. In a second section, McEwan gives a panoramic account of the harrowing evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, with Robbie among those saved. Realising she has ruined Cecilia and Robbie's lives, Briony works as a nurse during the Blitz in a third section. As McEwan follows these characters through six decades, Briony's search for redemption evolves into a meditation on the power of art. (Anchor)
這部小說以1935年的一個夏日開篇，13歲的女孩布里奧妮在向她的母親展示她剛完成的劇本，并準備在第二天晚上和她的三個表姐一起表演。“布里奧妮當時還不知道，這已經是她的這個劇本最成功的時刻了！其他的設想都只是些白日夢，不能為她帶來任何滿足，甚至會讓她嘗到沮喪的滋味。”當天晚上，布里奧妮15歲的表姐洛拉遭強暴，布里奧妮在黑暗的樹林中看到了兇手。布里奧妮出庭指證罪犯就是家庭女仆的兒子羅比，羅比來自劍橋，也是布里奧妮姐姐塞西莉亞的男朋友，羅比被捕入獄。在書的第二部分，麥克尤恩對敦刻爾克大撤退的頹敗進行了全景描述，羅比就是其中的幸存者。在第三部分，布里奧妮認識到自己的誤解毀了塞西莉亞和羅比的一生，渴望贖罪的她成為閃電戰期間的一名醫護人員。整本書跨越60年時間，一生懺悔的布里奧妮最后將情感注入筆下成就了其藝術之魂。（Anchor出版社）

*注：閃電戰（Blitz），1940年到1941年德軍對英國各主要城市的“大空襲”，即“不列顛空戰”。為實施入侵英國的“海獅”計劃，德國空軍對倫敦實施了近10個月的毀滅性大轟炸。英國得到英聯邦成員、其他被占歐洲國家和中立國美國的空軍幫助，戰爭在1941年10月12日以德國的失敗告終。

10. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006)
奇麻曼達·恩格茲·阿迪切，《半輪黃日》（2006年）

In her audacious and vividly imagined second novel, Adichie drew upon her ancestral past to write about the Biafra conflict, which traumatised her country and her family for three years after the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria seceded in 1967. The novel is told from the perspectives of twin sisters Olanna and Kainene, a 13-year-old houseboy and Richard, a British expatriate who is in love with Kainene. Olanna's academic boyfriend, who favours secession, is also a key character as Adichie shows the repercussions of postcolonial power struggles on individual lives. Adichie’s 2013 novel Americanah also ranked high in the poll, but missed out on a spot in the top 12 by one vote. (Anchor)
阿迪切利用大膽生動的想象，追憶先祖故事，創作了她的第二部作品，內容與比夫拉戰爭有關。1967年，伊博人占多數的尼日利亞東區脫離聯邦，引發三年內戰，摧毀了尼日利亞這個國家，也給尼日利亞人民帶來了深重苦難。小說的主人公是雙胞胎姐妹奧蘭娜和凱楠，以及一個13歲的男仆和喜愛凱楠的英國僑民理查德。奧蘭娜的男友也是一個關鍵人物，他是大學學者，支持東區獨立。作者通過這些人物形象，向讀者展示了后殖民時代國家權力斗爭對個人的影響。阿迪切2013年出版的小說《美國史跡》在調查中同樣廣受推崇，但因一票之差錯失了12強。（Anchor出版社）

11. Zadie Smith, White Teeth (2000)
査蒂·史密斯《白牙》（2000年）

Smith, then a 23-year-old prodigy, wowed the literary world with her first novel, which introduced a writer of inimitable wit and scope. White Teeth, which won Whitbread and Guardian first book awards, is set in London, where Archie Jones and Samal Iqbal, friends who met while serving in WWII, have settled to raise their families. Smith opens as Archie, divorced by his second wife, sits in his "fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate face down on the steering wheel". He's chosen suicide on New Year's Day 1975, his car parked in front of a halal butcher's shop, only to be saved by the owner. As White Teeth unfolds, it is chockablock with vivid scenes and characters, a portrait of postcolonial multicultural London: "Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks", Smith writes. (Vintage)
史密斯在23歲時就憑借處女作《白牙》中獨特的智慧和視角而震驚文壇，榮獲當年的惠布瑞特最佳處女作獎和《衛報》最佳處女作獎。《白牙》的故事背景是倫敦，講述的是二戰戰友阿吉·瓊斯和薩馬·伊克巴爾兩個家庭的悲歡離合。《白牙》以阿吉結束第二次婚姻開頭，1975年的元旦，“他坐在充滿濃煙的騎士火槍手牌旅行車里，臉朝下，趴在方向盤上”。他將車停靠在一家清真肉鋪的門口，做好了自殺的準備，最后被屠夫救下了。隨著故事展開，作者給我們呈現了后殖民時代多元文化并存的倫敦生活，刻畫了生動的人物形象。史密斯寫道：“孩子們的姓名就是文化碰撞的直接展示，隱含了大遷徙、擁擠的飛機船只、寒冷中抵達和醫療檢查等意思。”（Vintage出版社）

12. Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (2002)
杰弗里·尤金尼德斯，《中性》（2002年）

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974," Eugenides writes in the opening lines of his novel. At 14, Calliope Stephanides discovers she has a rare recessive mutation that renders her a pseudo-hermaphrodite. Claiming her "male brain", she shifts genders and becomes Cal. In often exuberant language, Eugenides layers questions of fate and free will onto Cal's coming-of-age story and the tale of the entrepreneurial rise of his parents, Desdemona and Lefty. (They have their own genetic secret.) Ultimately Cal’s condition gives him a near mythic gift – “the ability to communicate between the genders, to see not with the monovision of one sex but in the stereoscope of both". Middlesex bridged the gap between critical and commercial acclaim, as well, winning a Pulitzer and selling millions of copies. (Picador)
作者這樣開篇：“我擁有兩次生命：第一次是1960年1月，一個晴朗無霧的日子作為一個女嬰出生在底特律；第二次是1974年8月在密歇根佩托斯基的一個急診室里作為一個男孩重生。 ”14歲的卡莉歐碧·斯迪芬奈茲患上了罕見的基因隱性突變，使她成為了一名陰陽人。卡莉歐碧考慮到自己的男性本性，她變性成了卡爾。尤金尼德斯用意趣盎然的語言講述了卡爾的成長故事，以及卡爾父母列夫提和苔絲狄蒙娜的創業經歷（他們也有自己不為人知的基因缺陷）。最終，卡爾的基因問題卻讓他擁有了一項神奇的能力——“他能自由地游走在兩性世界之間，從雙性的立體角度思考問題而不僅僅站在單性的角度”。《中性》不僅榮獲了普利策獎，而且銷量百萬，在文學成就和商業成就上都表現地很突出。（Picador出版社）

（來源：英國廣播公司 編輯：許晶晶）