2010年--双胞胎 荷兰语

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2010 – The Twin
Author: Gerbrand Bakker
Translated from the original Dutch by David Colmer
Winner! – Watch Gerbrand Bakker’s Acceptance Speech
2010 Shortlist    2010 Longlist
The Judges’ Citation
The Twin is the first novel by Gerbrand Bakker, beautifully translated from the original Dutch by David Colmer. Though rich in detail, it’s a sparely written story, with the narrator’s odd small cruelties, laconic humour and surprising tendernesses emerging through a steady, well-paced, unaffected style.

Helmer van Wonderen is a farmer. For forty years he’s lived a stalled, frustrated life, with every decision on the farm being made by his father. It wasn’t the life Helmer intended. Through childhood he was one half of twins – an entity he even thought of inwardly as ‘Henk and Helmer’. But Henk was killed at eighteen in a car driven by his girlfriend, Riet, who was then ordered away by the boys’ grieving father. Helmer was called home from university to take his brother’s place on the farm. And then the mother he loved died.

But now Helmer’s father, too, is dying, and the shift in power between the two of them sets off great changes. Helmer moves the old man upstairs. “He sat there like a calf that’s just a couple of minutes old, before it’s been licked clean: with a directionless, wobbly head and eyes that drift over things.” Is this indifference, coldness, or Helmer’s first chance at revenge for what has been an unlived life ‘with his head under a cow’? And perhaps also for his father’s own seemingly deliberate cruelties, both on the farm itself and to the son whom he could never love as much as the dead brother.

Into what seems set fair to be a stunning and compelling study of unlocked grief and frozen hate comes Riet’s wayward teenage son, sent by his exasperated mother to get an inkling of experience away from home. This cheerful lad (“How is the dying going, Mr Van Wonderen?”), with all his openness and shifting moods and frank demands, hastens the changes that Helmer has already starting making in the house, and stirs up more reminders of the past. Deftly, this poignant and astonishingly tender story opens up into an exhilarating account of how a man can come to understand himself for the first time. It is a tale of redemption.

The book convinces from first page to last. With quiet mastery the story draws in the reader. The writing is wonderful: restrained and clear, and studded with detail of farm rhythms in the cold, damp Dutch countryside. The author excels at dialogue, and Helmer’s inner story-telling voice also comes over perfectly as he begins to change everything around him. There are intriguing ambiguities, but no false notes. Nothing and no one is predictable, and yet we believe in them all: the regular tanker driver, the next door neighbour with her two bouncing children, and Jaap, the old farm labourer from the twins’ childhood who comes back to the farm in time for the last great upheaval, as Helmer finally takes charge of what is left of his own life.

Judges: Anne Fine, Eve Patten, Zoe Wicomb, Abdourahman Waberi, Anatoly Kudryavitsky. Non-voting Chairman, Judge Eugene R. Sullivan
About the Book
When his twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return to the small family farm. He resigns himself to taking over his brother’s role and spending the rest of his days ‘with his head under a cow’.

After his old, worn-out father has been transferred upstairs, Helmer sets about furnishing the rest of the house according to his own minimal preferences. ‘A double bed and a duvet’, advises Ada, who lives next door, with a sly look. Then Riet appears, the woman once engaged to marry his twin. Could Riet and her son live with him for a while, on the farm?

The Twin is an ode to the platteland, the flat and bleak Dutch countryside with its ditches and its cows and its endless grey skies.

Ostensibly a novel about the countryside, as seen through the eyes of a farmer, The Twin is, in the end, about the possibility or impossibility of taking life into one’s own hands. It chronicles a way of life which has resisted modernity, is culturally apart, and yet riven with a kind of romantic longing.

(From Publisher)

About the Author
Gerbrand Bakker worked as a subtitler for nature films before becoming a gardener. The Twin is his prize-winning debut novel and will shortly be made into a film.

Librarian’s Comments
The books tells about the countryside as seen through the eyes of a farmer at the same time it is about universal matters.



ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Author       
Gerbrand Bakker

Country       
NL

Nominating Library       
Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Publisher       
Harvill Secker, UK

Translation       
Translated from the Dutch by David Colmer

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Categories: 2010, Previous Winners




2010年--双胞胎
作者。格布兰德-贝克尔
由David Colmer从荷兰语原文翻译而来。
获奖者! - 观看格布兰德-贝克尔的获奖感言
2010年入围名单 2010年长名单
评委们的评语
双子》是格布兰德-贝克尔的第一部小说，由大卫-科尔默从荷兰语原文翻译过来，非常精美。虽然细节丰富，但这是一个闲适的故事，叙述者奇特的小残酷、淡淡的幽默和令人惊讶的柔情通过稳定、节奏良好、不受影响的风格显现出来。

Helmer van Wonderen是一个农民。四十年来，他一直过着停滞不前、沮丧的生活，农场的每一个决定都由他的父亲做出。这并不是海尔默想要的生活。在整个童年时期，他是一对双胞胎的一半--他甚至在内心深处认为是 "Henk和Helmer "的实体。但亨克在18岁时被他的女友里特开车撞死了，然后被男孩们悲伤的父亲命令离开。海尔默被从大学叫回家，在农场里接替他哥哥的位置。然后，他所爱的母亲去世了。

但现在海尔默的父亲也快死了，他们两人之间权力的转移引发了巨大的变化。海尔默把老人搬上了楼。"他坐在那里，就像一头刚出生几分钟的小牛，还没有被舔干净：头没有方向，摇摇晃晃的，眼睛飘过东西。" 这究竟是冷漠、冷酷，还是海尔默第一次有机会为 "头埋在牛背上 "的不愉快生活进行报复？也许也是对他父亲自己看似故意的残忍行为的报复，无论是对农场本身还是对他永远无法像对死去的兄弟那样爱的儿子。

里特的十几岁的儿子被他气急败坏的母亲送出了家门，获得了一丝经验，这似乎是一个令人震惊和令人信服的研究，解开了悲伤和冻结的仇恨。这个开朗的小伙子（"范-汪登先生，你的死怎么样了？"），以他所有的开放、多变的情绪和坦率的要求，加速了海尔默已经开始在家里做出的改变，并激起了更多对过去的回忆。巧妙地，这个凄美的、令人惊讶的温情的故事打开了一个令人振奋的叙述，即一个人如何第一次了解自己。这是一个救赎的故事。

这本书从第一页到最后一页都令人信服。这个故事以其娴熟的技巧吸引着读者。文章写得很好：克制而清晰，充满了寒冷、潮湿的荷兰乡村的农场节奏的细节。作者擅长对话，当海尔默开始改变他周围的一切时，他内心讲故事的声音也完美地出现了。书中有耐人寻味的模糊之处，但没有虚假的音符。没有什么和什么人是可以预测的，但我们相信他们所有人：普通的油罐车司机、有两个活蹦乱跳的孩子的隔壁邻居，以及双胞胎童年时的老农场工人雅普，他在最后的大动荡中及时回到了农场，因为海尔默最终掌握了他自己生命中剩下的东西。

评审员。Anne Fine, Eve Patten, Zoe Wicomb, Abdourahman Waberi, Anatoly Kudryavitsky。无投票权的主席，尤金-R-沙利文法官
关于这本书
当他的双胞胎兄弟在一场车祸中死亡时，海尔默不得不回到小家庭农场。他甘愿接替哥哥的工作，并在余下的日子里 "把头埋在牛背上"。

在他年老体衰的父亲被转移到楼上后，海尔默开始按照自己最小的喜好来布置房子的其他部分。一张双人床和一条羽绒被"，住在隔壁的艾达用一种狡猾的眼神建议道。然后瑞特出现了，那个曾经与他的双胞胎订婚的女人。瑞特和她的儿子可以和他一起在农场住上一段时间吗？

孪生兄弟》是一曲对农场的颂歌，平坦而荒凉的荷兰乡村，有沟渠，有奶牛，有无尽的灰色天空。

表面上看，这是一部关于农村的小说，是通过一个农民的眼睛看到的，但《双胞胎》最终是关于将生活掌握在自己手中的可能性或不可能性。它记录了一种抵制现代性的生活方式，它在文化上是分离的，但又被一种浪漫的渴望所折磨。

(来自出版社)

关于作者
格布兰德-贝克尔在成为园丁之前，曾担任过自然电影的配音员。双子》是他获奖的首部小说，不久将被拍成电影。

图书管理员的评论
这本书讲述了一个农民眼中的乡村，同时它也是关于普遍性问题的。



其他信息
作者       
格布兰-贝克尔

国家       
荷兰

提名图书馆       
荷兰阿姆斯特丹Openbare Bibliotheek图书馆

出版商       
英国Harvill Secker公司

翻译       
由大卫-科尔默从荷兰语翻译过来的

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分类: 2010, 往届获奖者