JACKSON HEIGHTS
Book ID/图书代码： 04332808B29646
English Summary/英文概要： Precocious sixteen year old Sita and her best friend, Meena, are good Tamil Hindu girls living in Jackson Heights, Queens. They are modeled in their mothers’ minds on the epic Indian heroine Sita, a symbol of purity in the Ramayana. They’re also on a quest to lose their virginity. One summer, when Sita’s parents are fortuitously absent, she and Meena’s often light-hearted awakening unfolds against gripping local tragedies; the two girls’ stubborn honesty leads to their exposure of a local sex trafficking ring whose cruelties lie just below the surface of everyday life in their ‘Little India’ neighborhood and whose defeat marks the girls’ emergence into adulthood. JACKSON HEIGHTS is a brilliantly realized novel, full of fascinating characters, tension and insight. Along the way are captivating stories within stories: of Suketu, doomed and besotted murderer; Jyoti Krishnan, the defiant suicide girl; Robbie Parekh, tough cop, lover of romantic Hindi films; Kumar Patel, survivor of post-assassination riots in the South Indian section of Mumbai, American dreamer; Asha and Vinita Tikaram, victims of sex trafficking who light the way for others’ escape from it. And here, too, is the story of Jackson Heights itself-- a place that gets kind of “scary and illegal at night” as Sita says. It is a place at once altered and brought back to itself by the persistence and courage of two high school girls and the people who help them bring shameful secrets to light. In a
narrative that evokes the raw memories of bullying in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye and the intricate written clues of A.S. Byatt’s Possession, that brings the social commentary on class and ambition of Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger to Indian immigrants in New York, that is clear-eyed and desolate about transplanted traditions and diaspora in the manner of Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, JACKSON HEIGHTS is at once contemporary and mythic in its concerns, telling the story of a New York girl named Sita, not so long a virgin in this world.
Chinese Summary/中文概要： 十六岁早熟少女西塔和她最要好朋友米娜是印度皇后区杰克逊高地的泰米尔族人，正值青春年华。她们俩从母亲那里得知了印度史诗中的女英雄西塔—罗摩耶那（Ramayana）纯洁的象征。不过，她们的纯真即将离她们而去。一年夏天，西塔的父母意外离去，米娜时常掉以轻心，结果将两人带进一场扣人心弦的地方悲剧事件中：由于两个女孩子一味的诚实，当地的一个惨无人道的卖淫团伙顶上他们。这个团伙定点于“小印度”，过着普通人一样的生活，试图掩盖他们的真实身份。而他们的胜利法则就是把女孩子变成女人。 《杰克逊高地》是一本杰出的现实主义小说，故事中的人物刻画的惟妙惟肖充满张力与洞察力。而更加精彩之处则在于故事套故事，包括：凶恶谋杀犯Suketu的故事；一个有反抗精神，但最后自杀而亡的女孩Jyoti Krishnan的故事；一位热爱印度电影、坚韧不拔的警察Robbie Parekh的故事；从孟买南印度地区的后谋杀动乱中幸免的美国梦追逐者Kumar Patel的故事；还有Asha 和 Vinita Tikaram—两个勇敢逃离卖淫团伙的、并为他人树立榜样—的故事。当然，这也是一个讲述杰克逊高低本身的故事。正如西塔所说，杰克逊高低的“夜晚尽是令人恐惧的非法行为”。但是这个地方在两个坚持不懈、勇敢无畏的高中女孩的努力、以及众人的帮助下，罪恶得以揭露，它重新恢复昔日的纯洁。这本小说激起了原始的记忆，就像玛格丽特.阿特伍德的作品《猫眼》。同此本书还沿袭了A.S. 巴亚特《财产》中的复杂路线，对阶级以及Aravind Adiga在《白虎》中对纽约的印度移民的雄心进行了社会评价。故事对移植入的传统持清晰的荒凉观，与约瑟夫.奥尼尔的《Netherland》如出一辙。本书既揭示现代丑恶，又融入相关的神话传说，讲述了纽约女孩西塔失去纯正的故事。(兼职翻译-XMM)
Awards/获奖情况：
About the Author/作者介绍： 自1968年Chaya Bhuvaneswar的父母从南印度移居而来，她就一直生活在Flushing和杰克逊高地。她从耶鲁大学获得学士学位，随后进入哈佛大学访学，研究梵文和印第安当代历史。Chaya 已经在哈佛医学院完成临床医疗训练，目前是一名开业内科医生，并与家人居住在东海岸。作者凭借这本处女作本书获得亨菲尔德大西洋评论文学奖(Henfield Transatlantic Review Writing Award)和耶鲁英语专业埃尔默.威利兹奖(Yale English Department Elmore Willetts Prize)。Chaya Bhuvaneswar grew up in Flushing and Jackson Heights after her parents emigrated from South India in 1968. She received a BA from Yale and was subsequently a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, studying Sanskrit and Indian contemporary history. Chaya is now a practicing physician who completed her clinical training at Harvard Medical School and lives on the East Coast with her family. For chapters of JACKSON HEIGHTS, she received a Henfield Transatlantic Review Writing Award and the Yale English Department Elmore Willetts Prize. This is her first novel.
Format:
Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE
Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE
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