THREE LITTLE PIGS

Book ID/图书代码： 03277014B74175

English Summary/英文概要： Once upon a time, there were three brothers. Their father started life in a God-forsaken village on the mountains of Lucania, in bella Italia. As a little boy he learned the art of the shoemaker. Then he went to America and changed his name to ‘Ben Frank.’

In a medieval convent in the Alps, in the winter of 1974, an old man begins to speak. Sitting opposite him is a young American art conservator, there to work on the chapel’s frescoes, whom the old man has asked to record his story.

The shoemaker, the story continues, went to the bad after he lost his wife. Playing cards in a Brooklyn bar one night, he got involved in a brawl, which ended in a man’s death. It’s only afterwards that Ben Frank learns he has killed the only son of powerful Mafia boss Tonio Lupo. The shoemaker’s fate is sealed. But apparently so is his three sons’. For the ailing Mafioso pronounces a maledizione, an almost operatic curse: as each of the killer’s three sons reaches his forty-second year, the age of the Don’s dead son, he will die.

The story the young American records follows the three Frank brothers’ lives. Like the pigs in the classical folktale building their houses of different materials to make them wolf-proof, the brothers make different life choices in order to evade their fate. Presenting a panorama of the first half of the twentieth century, taking in the Jazz Age, the Prohibition, two world wars and the last years of colonialism, moving from America to Europe to Africa, and back again, with a cast that includes billionaires and gangsters, movies stars and conmen, spies and missionaries, the THREE LITTLE PIGS is a genre-bending novel in more than one way. It uses an engaging first-person oral narrative, a "low” style, but only to serve the aims of a literary novel. It is at once a folktale-like adventure story and a moral fable, a gripping thriller and an investigation of character and fate, choice and responsibility. The question central to Doxiadis’ previous works is also present, though in a totally different context: what are the limits of rationality? But this leads in this book back to the question, at the root of Greek tragedy: can a human being escape fate?

The old man completes the story of the three Frank brothers, but the young American is left with many questions about Lupo’s designated killer, the man to whom he assigned the fulfilment of the curse. As these questions begin to answer themselves, though, the young American learns, with a bang, that he may have become more involved than he would like in the still-unfinished, wider tale.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 很久很久以前，曾有过三兄弟。他们的父亲在美丽的意大利卢卡尼亚山上一个被上帝遗弃的村子里生活。小时候他学着做鞋匠。后来他去了美国，改名作本•弗兰克。

1974年，阿尔卑斯山，一所中世界修道院里，一位老人在讲述。他的对面坐的是一个来自美国年轻的艺术保护者，前来这个小教堂修复壁画。老人请他将自己的故事记录下来。

故事在继续，后来鞋匠在失去了妻子，处境每况愈下。一天晚上在布鲁克林打牌的时候，他卷入了一场纷争，杀掉了一名男子。当本•弗兰克意识到他亲手杀掉的是权倾一时的黑手党巨擘托尼奥•卢波的独子时，他的命运就已经注定了。而且显然也波及到了他的三个儿子。因为年老体衰的首脑宣布了一道命令，几乎算是一个戏剧般的诅咒：他每个儿子到了42岁，也就是首脑独子死去时候的年龄，就必然会死去。

年轻的美国人记录下来的故事遵循这弗兰克三兄弟的生活轨迹。就像经典的故事里说的用不同材料建房抵御狼的小猪一样，三兄弟选择了不同的生活去逃避他们的命运。

本书全面呈现了二十世纪上叶浮世百态，包罗了爵士乐时代，禁酒令，两次世界大战和殖民主义后期诸多元素，从美洲到欧洲再到非洲，循环往复。人物包括了亿万富翁、黑帮、电影明星、赌棍、间谍和传教士。不管从哪个角度来说，本书内容风格可谓曲折跌宕。作者采用了生动的第一人口述方法，很简单，但是完美的契合于一本文艺小说。因而本书就成了轶闻一般的冒险故事，或者道德寓言，或者扣人心弦的悬疑小说，一次对人物和命运，抉择与责任的审视。多克希亚迪斯先前的作品中核心的问题在一个不同的背景下也被呈现了出来：理性的极限在哪里？在本书中的这个问题的落脚于一种希腊悲剧式风格：人能逃得过命运吗？

老人讲完了弗兰克三兄弟的故事，年轻的美国人却带着一肚子的疑问离开了，卢波指定去完成诅咒的杀手是谁？正当谜题慢慢揭开之时，年轻的美国人遭到了一次重击。在这个依然没有结束的诅咒中，他陷的远比他想的要深。(LNL)

Awards/获奖情况：非常有意思、委婉和诱人，要我来说，简直让人无法拒绝的小说——奥利弗•赛克斯，《关于<佩特罗叔叔和哥德巴赫猜想>的遐想》（HALLUCINATIONS on UNCLE PETROS AND GOLDBACH’S CONJECTURE）作者

A very funny, tender, charming and, to my mind, irresistible novel– Oliver Sacks, author of HALLUCINATIONS on UNCLE PETROS AND GOLDBACH’S CONJECTURE

About the Author/作者介绍： 阿波斯托罗斯•多克希亚迪斯名声大噪的作品《佩德罗叔叔和哥德巴赫猜想》获得如“如数学一般的小说”的赞誉，他的漫画小说《逻辑》（LOGICOMIX）高居纽约时报畅销书榜首，已成经典。他的作品已被翻译成25种语言。

Apostolos Doxiadis’ much-lauded UNCLE PETROS AND GOLDBACH’S CONJECTURE has been hailed as the novel that started “mathematical fiction,” and his graphic novel LOGICOMIX, a New York Times Number-One Bestseller, is already a classic. His work has been translated in 25 languages.

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Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE

Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE

Sales in other countries/其他国家销售情况：All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth, Germany (Klett Cotta), Greece (Ikaros), Israel (Books in the Attic), Italy (Bompiani), Spain (Alianza)

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