Prisoner of life

Family Sins and Other Stories

"Prisoners of Life" is a collection of 12 short stories by William Trevor, exploring the emotional limits of ordinary people in Irish cities and rural areas, hidden beneath the restrained daily routines. Each of them, willingly or unknowingly, is caught in a web of fate and desire. Taking a step back means loss, while taking a step forward comes with a price. Thus, these 12 stories seem to have a continuous theme throughout: everyone is a prisoner of life.
Whether it is the unlucky couple who were fooled by the financial sponsor because of their greed for inheritance but are grateful for the shackles, or the unruly prodigal son who bears the sins of another life and refuses to be influenced by money; whether it is the female painter who has been imprisoned by illusions all her life and quietly buried her first love in ignorance, or the parasitic father who takes advantage of the warmth of the world and regards himself as a benefactor, as the author traces the root cause of every pain of the characters in the book, readers will find that there is a flame under every iceberg in the world, and a bullet can be fired in every gentle look.
The collected article "The Mystery of Drimachren" was once adapted into a TV series by the BBC, which reproduces a murder Rashomon-like story of how people approach and avoid the truth, bury and create the truth.
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Trevor may be the greatest short story writer in the English-speaking world today. —The New Yorker
I learned how to write by reading Trevor's works. —Li Yiyun

2023-11-01

上海译文出版社

Archipelago Books

272

9787532793655