MIDNIGHT AT THE DRAGON CAFE

Book ID/图书代码： 12760004B09576

English Summary/英文概要： Su-Jen Chou is seven years old in 1957 when she and her mother come from China to join her father, who has bought into a small restaurant in a town near Toronto. Su-Jen, who becomes Annie when she begins school, narrates the story of her parents’ lives and her own developing awareness with an eye for the telling detail, though her understanding evolves with appropriate slowness. Annie quickly assimilates, making friends and becoming a star student, but her still young and beautiful mother, who speaks no English, is deeply unhappy, missing China, where her family had wealth and prestige before the Communist takeover. She argues constantly with Annie’s elderly father, who has lived on and off in Canada for many years. The two share no affection, sleeping with Annie in the bed between them until her father eventually moves into another room. After Annie’s much older brother, Lee-Kung, who has been working elsewhere in Canada, comes to help run the restaurant, Annie learns that both parents had previous marriages and children who died, that Lee-Kung is only her half-brother, and that his mother may have committed suicide. Inevitably, Annie’s mother and Lee-Kung are drawn toward each other. While Annie witnesses the affair with disgust, she’s also caught up in the less interesting complexities of her own pubescent life, particularly her friendship with Charlotte, one of those golden children doomed in fiction to early death. Annie’s mother becomes pregnant around the same time that Lee-Kung’s bride arrives for the marriage arranged at his father’s insistence. Annie sees looks exchanged, hears snatches of conversation. What in lesser hands could have become overwrought remains bittersweet and elegiac as the family struggles to maintain dignity and unity.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 她曾經為《環球郵報》和《華盛頓郵報》資深撰稿人
她曾因短篇小說集《中國犬及其他》（China Dog and Other Stories）和小說《午夜咖啡店》（Midnight at the Dragon Café）而備受好評，享譽無數

《午夜咖啡店》在波特蘭、俄勒岡州都被列入“人人必讀精選”
並獲2006年度美國圖書館協會重要圖書獎

1957年周舒真只有7歲，她隨母親從中國遠赴多倫多，她的父親在附近的城市經營著一家小飯館。很快舒真就開始了她在多倫多的學校生活，並且有了新鮮的洋名字—安妮。安妮不僅成績好，而且交到了很多好朋友，成為了學校裡的小明星。但是她年輕漂亮的母親，卻因為語言溝通障礙，終日鬱鬱寡歡，想念祖國，想念共產黨掌權之前聲勢顯赫、錦衣玉食的家族生活。母親經常和上了年紀的父親爭吵，父親斷斷續續在加拿大生活已有多年。夫妻之間毫無感情，即使睡覺中間也要隔著安妮，最後父親只有搬到別的房間。

哥哥在加拿大另外一個城市工作，這次過來幫忙打理飯館。直到哥哥的到來，安妮才得知了一個驚人的秘密，原來父母結婚之前都各自經歷過另外一段婚姻，並且育有子女但是都過早夭折了，只留下了李恭--她同父異母的哥哥，李恭的母親可能是自殺身亡。

意料之中，安妮的母親和李恭都吸引著彼此的目光，安妮意識到母親和哥哥李恭之間絕對有不可告人的秘密。雖然安妮對這樣的事情非常厭惡，但自己也陷入青春期的複雜情愫當中，尤其是與夏洛蒂之間的友誼，夏洛蒂是一個和她一樣的學校裡的小明星，小說中的這位小夥伴也不幸過早離開人世。

李恭馬上就要迎娶新娘了，婚禮是迫于父親的安排，而幾乎與此同時，安妮的母親卻發現了自己懷孕的事實…(Claire)

Awards/获奖情况：“A heartbreaking but muted love story… Deeply satisfying: a lovely sensuality pervades in spite of the harshness of the world Bates portrays so eloquently.”---Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A fascinating and finely crafted work of fiction.… Compelling.… Absorbing and alluring …”---Winnipeg Free Pres

“In Midnight at the Dragon Café, Judy Fong Bates has created a novel that does what the very best fiction can do – take us into a world we could not have otherwise entered, put us among people we could not otherwise know. As quintessentially Canadian as Alice Munro, and equally delightful to read.”---Shyam Selvadurai

“Wonderfully written and acutely observed, Midnight at the Dragon Café is a haunting novel.… As skilled and original as it is moving.”---London Free Press

“A unique and imaginative drama.… Bates’s writing is smooth and simple, but powerful.”---Calgary Herald

“A terrific page-turner of a first novel.…”---Quill & Quire

“Judy Fong Bates is an accomplished storyteller.… The tragic events that form the plot of this novel are in no way restricted to the Chinese experience. Betrayal, human frailty, lost hopes, and shattered dreams belong to all of us.… The quintessential good read.”---Edmonton Journal

“Judy Fong Bates slips us past the front counter into the inner life of the Dragon Café, as if we lived there too.…. Her attention to physical detail is matched by compassionate understanding, which gives real weight to the telling of the submerged, drowning passion hidden in this household.”---National Post

“[Judy Fong Bates] has transmuted her experience into fiction that says something essential and makes wonderful reading.… [She] has been compared with Alice Munro because of her controlled prose and the currents of feeling that seethe beneath the surface of her fictional Ontario town.”---Vancouver Sun

“An elegant first novel.”---Chatelaine

For further information, see:
http://bukowskiagency.com/Midnight%20at%20the%20Dragon%20Cafe.htm

About the Author/作者介绍： Judy Fong Bates came to Canada from China as a young child and grew up in several small Ontario towns. She is a writer, storyteller and teacher. She taught elementary school in the city of Toronto for over twenty years. Her stories have been broadcast on CBC radio and published in literary journals and anthologies. She has written for The Globe and Mail and The Washington Post. She is the author of the critically acclaimed short-story collection, China Dog and Other Stories, and the novel, Midnight at the Dragon Café, which was the Everybody Reads selection for Portland, Oregon, and an American Library Association Notable Book for 2006. Her family memoir, The Year of Finding Memory, was published in April, 2010 by Random House of Canada.
茱迪幼時自中國移民加拿大，成長過程中輾轉於安大略湖很多個城市。她是一名作家、說書人還是一位教師，在多倫多的一所小學有長達二十多年的教齡。

她的作品曾在加拿大廣播電臺（CBC）播出,並且發表于很多文學期刊和詩文選集。曾經為《環球郵報》和《華盛頓郵報》撰稿。曾因短篇小說集《中國犬及其他》（China Dog and Other Stories）和小說《午夜咖啡店》（Midnight at the Dragon Café）而享譽無數。其中《午夜咖啡店》在波特蘭、俄勒岡州都被列入“人人必讀精選”（ Everybody Reads selection）並獲2006年度美國圖書館協會重要圖書獎。她的家庭回憶錄《追憶》（The Year of Finding Memory）於2010年4月由加拿大Random House出版。

更多詳情可以訪問http://www.judyfongbates.com/

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：RIGHTS SOLD US: Counterpoint Press,2005 Canada: McClelland &Stewart, 2004 Thailand: Sanskrit Books Mainland China: Nankai University Press of Tianjin

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