HOW TO PAINT A DEAD MAN
Book ID/图书代码： 04560009B30874
English Summary/英文概要： Susan is a photographer. She has a loving family, a kind and thoughtful boyfriend and a successful career. Everything is perfect, steady and contained until the day her twin brother, Danny, is killed in a road accident. Overwhelmed by grief, locked in profound spiritual and physical agony and consumed by guilt, simply by virtue of the fact that she is still alive, she embarks on a deeply erotic and destructive affair with the husband of her boss and close friend.
As the course of this passionate relationship unfolds, we are drawn into the secret lives of those connected to her past and present, in both familial and tenuous ways, who act as a chorus to Susan’s story. Her father, Peter, is a successful landscape artist – a brash, compulsive ‘northerner’ who, unbeknownst to his family and friends, has had, in his turn, an all-consuming and ultimately tragic relationship. His friend is the famous but increasingly elusive Italian painter, Giorgio, who is accused of fascist tendencies but is haunted by a secret tragedy that has informed his life’s artistic preoccupations. And then there’s Giorgio’s own, most unlikely student, Annette Tambroni, whose blindness gives us a different vision of the world, but whose beauty invites a brutal destiny.
Written in the most startling and sensuous prose, HOW TO PAINT A DEAD MAN moves between past and present, and, through the subtlest of connections, interweaves these narratives together to create extraordinary insights into the places where the creative, emotional and physical worlds meet. In its universality the novel asserts the centrality of loss and the certainty of grief in all of our lives, but as Susan’s affair reaches its final and unexpected climax it teaches her, and us, how we might live again.
Chinese Summary/中文概要： 1960年代的義大利為已亡者畫肖像畫的人，在當時被認為是繪畫行業中最神秘的一群，從事此工作的畫家Giorgio，被認為藝術的犧牲者及失敗者，沒有任何人瞭解他…而就在創作生涯最後的階段，他瘋狂的著迷於繪製「一堆瓶子」的主的作品…
Giorgio生前有一位從小失明的女學生Annette，她一直試著想看清無法呈現的世界，而就算她眼睛看不見也透過想像描繪出一個獨特的樣貌。為什麼她心中父親的想像如同教堂中祭台邊所繪製的怪獸般？
30年後的英國Cumbria，一位優秀的風景畫家Peter，曾在年輕學生時期寫一封信給Giorgio詢問有關他繪畫的技術，但卻沒在信上留下地址，收到信後的Giorgio卻因為此信從此陷入無法自拔的困境中。
Peter身為攝影師的女兒Susan，有一個體貼的男友及成功事業，看似一切完美，直到她孿生的雙胞胎哥哥因車禍而喪命，從此她的人生也變了調。過度悲傷的她，一蹶不振，放縱自己介入與老闆及好友的婚姻…
作者以四個不同角色所發展出各自的故事，從過去到現代，從藝術到心理分析，在在都顯示出作者製造關連銜接點的說故事能力。(VL)
Awards/获奖情况：入圍2009曼布克奬作品：HOW TO PAINT A DEAD MAN by Sarah Hal
longlisted for the Man Booker prize 2009
Rights sold:
France (Christian Bourgois); Israel (Kinneret); Netherlands (Ambo/Anthos); US (HarperCollins); UK (faber & faber )
a fine, vivid prose of exceptional poetic intensity and there are passages in this novel, in particular the sections in Annette’s voice, of luminous beauty---Jane Shilling, Daily Telegraph
Hall’s writing manages to combine acute sensitivity and daring. She experiments with voice and form, giving each of her characters a distinctive means of addressing the reader... Hall manages to juggle the individual trajectories brilliantly. Her writing is visceral and engaging, and the emotional lives of her characters are skilfully realised in this bright weave of disparate voices – for whom art is at once a way of seeing and a way of life---Natalie Sandison, The Times
HOW TO PAINT A DEAD MAN will not disappoint her champions. It is a stylish novel, as replete with ideas as it is technically ambitious, interweaving four separate strands and characters across different times and places---Sarah Dunant, Guardian
About the Author/作者介绍： Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. She received a BA from Aberystwyth University, Wales, and a MLitt in Creative Writing from St Andrews, Scotland. She is the author of HAWESWATER, which won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel, a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award, and a Lakeland Book of the Year prize. In 2004, her second novel, THE ELECTRIC MICHAELANGELO, was short-listed for the Man Booker prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia region), and the Prix Femina Etranger, and was long-listed for the Orange prize for fiction. Her third novel, THE CARHULLAN ARMY, was published in 2007, and won the 2006/07 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, a Lakeland Book of the Year prize, and was short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction.
Her work has been translated into many languages. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and a radio adaptation of her third novel.
Sarah Hall，1974年生於英國Cumbria，畢業於威爾斯大學蘭亞伯斯威學院，取得聖安德魯大學創意寫作的學位。首部出版小說HAWESWATER在2003年獲得大英國協最佳首作奬及蒂特拉斯克獎。2004年第二部作品THE ELECTRIC MICHAELANGELO入圍曼布克奬決選名單及柑橘奬。2007年的作品THE CARHULLAN ARMY入圍亞瑟‧克拉克科幻小說類的決選名單獎，更榮獲萊思紀念獎及年度Lakeland Book好書奬。2009年最新作品HOW TO PAINT A DEAD MAN又再度成為曼布克奬的決選名單之一。
Format:TRADE PAPERBACK
Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE(到期可授)
Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE
Sales in other countries/其他国家销售情况：
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