1.An Odyssey by Daniel Mendelsohn
《艰难旅程》丹尼尔·门德尔松
After the author’s father turned 81， he asked to sit in on his son’s class on Homer and later the pair set off on a themed cruise tracing the possible path of Odysseus’s journey。 Mendelsohn’s account is a poignant and funny memoir as well as a stirring work of literary criticism。 The book is an education。
在作者的父亲81岁时，他要求旁听儿子讲荷马的课，而后他们开始了一场主题探讨，追寻奥德修斯旅程的可能路线。门德尔松的叙述是一个尖锐而有趣的回忆录，同时也是一个激动人心的文学批评作品。这本书本身就是一种教育。
2.The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick
《伊丽莎白·哈德威克的论文集》
Hardwick changed the face of popular American literary criticism with her broadside on the state of book reviewing in 1959， and for half a century she continued to set the standard in her wide-ranging essays， puncturing stale myths and refining our idea of what constitutes genius。
哈德威克在1959年改变了美国文学批评流行的风潮。在半个世纪的时间里，她广泛涉猎文章，打破标准，打破陈旧的神话，提炼出天才的构想。
3.Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh
《思念另一个世界》奥提莎·莫什费格
The characters in this story collection are at the ends of their ropes and out of their dirty minds — just the right state for that epiphany we’ve all been waiting for。
故事中的人物智穷力竭，思想纯净 — 这就是我们一直在等待的顿悟的正确状态。
4.The Idiot by Elif Batuman
《白痴》艾丽芙•巴图曼
What 18-year-old college freshman isn’t a total dumb-dumb and how much worse was it for the teens who showed up in the mid-1990s when email was a new thing and its modes of humiliation weren’t yet codified？ In her first novel， Batuman， author of The Possessed， plumbs the depths， to great comic effect。
十八岁的大学新生不是一个完全愚蠢的人，对于那些在二十世纪九十年代中期出现的十几岁的年轻人来说，电子邮件是一件新事物，它的羞辱模式还没有被编纂， 《群魔》的作者巴图曼在她的第一部小说中，探索写作深度使其发挥了巨大的喜剧效果。
5.The Invention of Angela Carter by Edmund Gordon
《安吉拉·卡特的发明》埃德蒙·戈登
Angela Carter changed Anglophone literature， reviving the gothic style and pioneering magic realism， before she died much too soon in 1992 at age 51。 Gordon’s biography renders the author an unforgettable character in her own right。
安吉拉·卡特享年51岁，在1992年去世之前，她改变了英语的文学，恢复了哥特式的风格和开创了魔幻现实主义。戈登的传记使她的作品成为了一个令人难忘的角色。
6.Moving Kings by Joshua Cohen
约书亚·科恩
Fresh from the IDF， the Israeli immigrants in this novel go to work for a Jersey moving company that displaces people in and around the tri-state area， sometimes voluntarily， sometimes otherwise。 In an era that prizes likability， Cohen takes his gentrification novel to ugly places in prose that’s always high-end。
这部小说中，从IDF来的以色列移民去新泽西的一家搬家公司工作，这家公司有时自愿帮助三角洲或者三角洲附近的居民搬家，有时则收费。在这个崇尚可爱的时代，科恩将他中产阶级化的小说置于那些高端小说的丑陋之处。
7.Notes on a Foreign Country by Suzy Hansen
《国外杂记》苏西·汉森
When the New Jersey–born Suzy Hansen， a veteran reporter for the New York Observer and The New York Times Magazine， moved to Istanbul ten years ago she soon discovered the country where she’d grown up wasn’t the America the rest of the world knew： an imperial power that in many places has been anything but benign。 Her book is an awakening to the idea that “our American dreams have come at the expense of a million other destinies。”
新泽西出生的纽约观察家和纽约时报杂志的资深记者苏西·汉森十年前搬到伊斯坦布尔时，她很快就发现了她长大的地方并不是世界其他地区所公认的美国：在许多地方，帝国主义并不亲切。 她的书唤醒了这样一种观点： “我们的美国梦是以百万个其他命运为代价的。”
8.Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
《牧师回忆录》帕特里西亚·洛克伍德
A poet’s memoir of coming home as a 20-something refugee from the hipster archipelago to the reactionary heartland， Priestdaddy is the rare book that veers from hilarious to heartbreaking and back from page to page。
这是一名诗人的回忆录，主人公20多岁时作为一个难民从潮人群岛来到反动的心脏地带。《牧师回忆录》是一本罕见的书籍，它背离了由热闹到心碎的记录常规，反方向行之。
9.The Schooldays of Jesus by J。 M。 Coetzee
《耶稣的学生时代》约翰·马克斯维尔·库切
The second volume in the Nobel laureate’s projected trilogy about refugees bereft of their memories in a strange Spanish-speaking land， Schooldays is an education in Dostoevsky， Bach， and Plato that delivers the pleasures of a thriller。
诺贝尔奖获得者关于难民的三部曲的第二卷，讲的是在一个陌生的西班牙语土地上失去记忆的难民，学生时代学习的是陀思妥耶夫斯基，巴赫和柏拉图，而这却传达了惊悚小说的乐趣。
10.So Much Blue by Percival Everett
《如此悲伤》珀西瓦尔·埃弗雷特
Three plots from the life of a cynical and disabused painter intertwine in this elegant and haunting novel that moves from Rhode Island to Paris to El Salvador and through meditations on war， love， family， and art。
一个玩世不恭的画家生活中的三个情节交织在一部的优雅和令人难忘的小说中，从罗德岛到巴黎再到萨尔瓦多，表现出对战争，爱情，家庭和艺术的沉思。
11.Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang
《酸涩的心》珍妮张
These stories of Chinese immigrant families in New York， told through the eyes of their precocious and prickly daughters， boil over with pain， love， and bittersweet laughter。 Zhang at her best is a virtuoso of the sinuous sentence， veering with acrobatic ease between the registers of innocence and experience。
以早熟易怒的女儿们的视角，讲述了纽约华人移民家庭中的痛苦、爱情和甜蜜的笑声。作者擅长使用复杂句子，在记录纯真与经验之间自如地进行转换。
12.South and West by Joan Didion
《南与西》琼·迪迪安
Two of Didion’s 1970s magazine assignments — to write about the Gulf Coast and the Patty Hearst trial — never took flight， but the notes for those projects collected here are both fascinating historical documents and revealing glimpses at a great writer’s methods。
迪迪安二十世纪七十年代的两本杂志作品——撰写关于墨西哥湾沿岸和帕蒂·赫斯特的审判——没有取得惊人的成功，但是这里收集的项目记录都是引人入胜的历史文献，揭示一个伟大的作家方法的独到之处。
13.Void Star by Zachary Mason
《无人星》扎卡里·梅森
A vision of the future replete with drones， artificial intelligence， rising seas， and a desertified corn belt， Mason’s novel is the year’s most cerebral and chilling dystopia。
对于未来充满无人机，人工智能，海平面上升和沙漠化的玉米带的展望，梅森的小说是今年最理智，也是最可怕的反乌托邦作品。
Wait Till You See Me Dance by Deb Olin Unferth
《等到你看我起舞》Deb Olin Unferth
Worth it for the title story alone， Unferth’s collection certifies her as a virtuoso minimalist and an heir to Diane Williams and Lydia Davis。
单看标题，这个故事就值得一读，Unferth的收藏证明了她是一位极简派艺术家，也是黛安·威廉姆斯和莉迪亚·戴维斯的继承人。
14.White Tears by Hari Kunzru
《白色眼泪》哈里·昆兹鲁
What starts as story of music and friendship moves into the tricky territory of cultural appropriation before becoming a ghost story about the shames of American history。
故事开始时以音乐与友谊的主题呈现给大家，后来便成为一种棘手的文化盗用，最后成为了一部关于美国历史耻辱的鬼故事。
来源：沪江英语
责任编辑：陈熙
