WE THINK OF YOU AS ALREADY DEAD: A NOVEL

Book ID/图书代码： 03890014B71290

English Summary/英文概要： In an unnamed country, a man simply known as K seems much like any other employee on Monday morning—blankly staring at his office walls while awaiting his next assignment. The only difference is that his office is a crumbling shack along an abandoned railroad, his assignment is a human being, and his supplies are restraints and a bag of knives. To all appearances, K is the perfect government employee, diligently interrogating his subjects, faithfully recording and logging the information he extracts into his reports. But his latest case, a young soldier, is proving more difficult than the others, more unsettling, and his straightforward account of his work days becomes riddled with misgivings, attempts at explanation, and guilt—for himself, his country, and the truth of what one man will do to another.

In We Think of You As Already Dead, Laura Hitch creates a heartrending, psychologically vivid portrait of one man’s life, of how he came to inhabit the roles of husband, father, and torturer. Blending the bleak landscape of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road with the poetic lyricism of Kevin Powers’s The Yellow Birds, Laura Hitch explores a question that was once raised in Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea: “You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?”

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 在一个不知名的国度里，一个被人们称为K的男人就和其他雇员一样，在星期一的早上，百无聊赖地盯着办公室的墙壁，等待他的下一个任务。唯一的区别就是他的办公室是一条废旧铁路旁摇摇欲坠的棚屋。他的任务是要对付一个人，他的补给是一堆违禁品和一袋刀子。表面上看，K是一个出色的政府雇员，勤勉地征询市民，并忠实地记录于他的报告中。但是，K遇到了一个年轻的士兵，这次的采访并不顺利，也使得K更为不安。他对自己的工作开始感到愧疚，对自己的国家感到愧疚，更为一个人是如何残忍地对待另一个人的真相而愧疚。

在《我们当你已经死了》中，劳拉•希契生动地描绘了一个人物悲惨的一生，以及他是如何扮演着丈夫，父亲和拷打者的角色的，并赋予了人物极为细致的心理活动描写。书中还描述了科马克麦卡锡极富诗意的道路。劳拉探讨了一个同样也在海明威的《老人与海》中也出现的问题：“当他活着的时候，你爱他，当他死去后，你仍然爱他。如果你爱他，杀了他就不是一种罪恶，或者说你的罪恶只有更深？”（XAT）

Awards/获奖情况：

About the Author/作者介绍： Laura Hitch is a 24-year-old debut novelist from Britain. She graduated from Oxford University with a degree in theology and philosophy. She travels extensively, speaks four languages, and currently lives in Italy.
The novel was inspired by a discussion the author had with students while teaching at a South Korean middle school, around the time that Kim Jong-Il died. They were most interested in the stories that might be told about the people who were capable of committing such atrocities, and many students voiced the belief that such people were obviously different from everyone else. But the more interesting question for the author was, “What if they’re not?” And so this novel—that explores how a man who isn’t a sadist finds himself as a torturer in the name of patriotism—was born.

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Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE

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