《云游》是波兰作家托卡尔丘克在2007年完成的作品。由116个篇章构成。其中包括散文式反思、架空历史的虚构故事以及真实故事。全书采用复杂的非线性结构，字里行间充满身体与灵魂碰撞出的火花，戏谑与启发性的冥想交织，打破时间的界限，突破空间的重围，这一次换光阴来追逐她。在这个神秘的世界里，作者的身体和灵魂都驰骋在云端，在人体、精神与心灵之间来回切换，探索生命、死亡与迁移的奥义。她带领读者上天入地，遨游云海。你是谁？你从哪里来？要到哪里去？答案就藏在这本《云游》里。
今天我们就来看看世界文学网里的一篇书评吧～
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One of Europe’s most important and original voices finally, after many years, has a new book on the English-language market. Olga Tokarczuk (pronounced toh-kar-chook) is Poland’s greatest living novelist, an author of endless variety, as popular as she is controversial in her homeland. There, Tokarczuk’s books are regular best-sellers, have been adapted into films, and set the national discussion in a way many writers can only dream of. She has made her way into translation into numerous languages, but until now, English readers have only had access to two of her books: House of Day, House of Night (Northwestern, 2003) and Primeval and Other Times (Twisted Spoon, 2010), both in translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. This year’s publication in the United States of her extraordinary novel Flights, translated by Jennifer Croft, marks the beginning of what I hope will be Tokarczuk’s true, belateddiscovery by anglophone readers.
belated
ADJ-GRADED 迟来的；延误的；姗姗来迟的 A belated action happens later than it should have done.
Anglophone
ADJ（使用多种语言的地区里）讲英语的Anglophone communities are English-speaking communities in areas where more than one language is commonly spoken.
Flights was first published in Poland in 2007. Tokarczuk describes the book as a constellation novel, in reference to its complex, nonlinear structure. It is a fiendishly difficult book to describe. Flights combines essayistic reflections, fictional stories, and fictionalized histories, varying in length from thirty-odd pages to a paragraph or two, interwoven around two main themes: travel and the preservation of the human body. We hear the narrator’s reflections as she travels through an endless succession of airports, which she considers a new human habitat. We learn true stories: of the pioneering seventeenth-century Dutch anatomist Peter Verheyen writing letters to his own amputated and preserved leg, or of Ludwika Chopin smuggling her dead brother Fryderyk’s preserved heart back into his native Poland in a jar under her skirt. We also read fictional stories: of a Polish tourist whose wife and child disappear while on vacation in Croatia, or of an ordinary Russian woman named Annushka abandoning her family for a life in motion on the Moscow metro. From time to time Tokarczuk also inserts herself into these stories, and it is not always clear what is fiction and what is fact.
nonlinear
ADJ形容词不按逻辑规律的;非线性的 If you describe something as non-linear, you mean that it does not progress or develop smoothly from one stage to the next in a logical way. Instead, it makes sudden changes, or seems to develop in different directions at the same time.
fiendish
ADJ-GRADED 计划、行动、装置等)巧妙的，富有想象力的 A fiendish plan, action, or device is very clever or imaginative.
odd
ADV （用于数字后）大约，左右，略多 You use odd after a number to indicate that it is only approximate.
anatomist
N-COUNT 解剖学家 An anatomist is an expert in anatomy.
amputate
截(肢) To amputate someone's arm or leg means to cut all or part of it off in an operation because it is diseased or badly damaged.
In lieu of a conventional plot, the mystery of what links these stories pulls the reader along. Reading Flights feels like unraveling the strands of a mystery, or—like Verheyen during a dissection—examining and reexamining a specimen in increasingly fine detail. Each story circles around the search for immortal life and the core of human existence. It is a search that leads Flights’ characters and its narrator into an endless, restless probing of humankind’s external and interior worlds, rejecting the Cartesian division between body and soul.
lieu
PREP-PHRASE 短语介词代替…；作为…的替代 If you do, get, or give one thing in lieu of another, you do, get, or give it instead of the other thing, because the two things are considered to have the same value or importance.
pull someone along
书中潜藏着一个神秘线索，连接每一章节，激发读者一路探索。
unravel
V-ERG揭开；揭示 If you unravel a mystery or puzzle, or if it unravels, it gradually becomes clearer and you can work out the answer to it.
strand
N-COUNT (计划或理论的)部分，方面 A strandof a plan or theory is a part of it.
reject
这里的意思是，《云游》的角色和叙述者对人类外部和内部世界进行无休止地探索，而绝不是笛卡尔式的，对身体和灵魂的明确划分。VERB 动词摈弃，抛弃，不接受(信仰或政治制度) If you reject a belief or a political system, you refuse to believe in it or to live by its rules.
This is a book to be felt—reading it is highly experiential, full of almost mystical insight. Tokarczuk leads us from one voice to another, modulating tones and themes and at times building toward rich, poetic climaxes. For instance, when an eminent professor of Greek history suffers a stroke, Tokarczuk presents the extraordinary image of all the places he spent his life steadily drowning in a never-ending flood of red fluid, linking the blood filling his brain with Homer’s famous “wine-dark sea.” All this makes Flights a daring adventure in the possibilities of nonlinear storytelling. Tokarczuk has said Poland’s own history of disappearing and reappearing on the map of Europe lends its literature a preference for the fragmentary and the uncertain. The structure of Flights also draws on Tokarczuk’s background in psychology, mirroring the human mind skipping from one train of thought to another, jumping to conclusions, drawing connections based on intuition rather than logic. Seemingly chaotic at first, Flights steadily reveals an extremely intricate structure, producing not a single narrative direction but a sort of glistening web of interconnections—Tokarczuk has said she was inspired by airlines’ networklike route maps.
modulate
VERB 调节;调整 To modulate an activity or process means to alter it so that it is more suitable for a particular situation.
eminent
ADJ-GRADED (尤指因专业出众而)著名的，受尊敬的，有声望的An eminent person is well-known and respected, especially because they are good at their profession.
glisten
VERB（因湿润或油腻而）闪闪发光 If something glistens, it shines, usually because it is wet or oily.
This complex polyphony presents a challenge for the translator, who must grapple not only with the beauty of Tokarczuk’s style but also maintain a unity of voice amid all the variation. Croft’s prose is rich and alive, navigating the book’s stylistic twists and turns with confidence. Her own background as a novelist is evident—the fictional passages are some of the strongest points of the translation. I was struck that Croft often conserves Tokarczuk’s complex Polish syntax, challenging anglophone ears to find the rhythm in Tokarczuk’s phrasings. Her translation has justly won the Found in Translation Award, the Polish government’s prize for translations into English.
polyphony
复调音乐 a type of music that combines several different tunes at the same time
grapple
VERB 动词努力解决（问题）；设法克服（困难） If you grapple with a problem or difficulty, you try hard to solve it.
That Tokarczuk and Croft were named winners of the 2018 Man Booker International Prize is a testament to the success of their joint effort. It is refreshing to see a book like Flights received so warmly by anglophone critics. Ours is a literary tradition that values plot, structure, and linear character development. Flights is a small opening into a universe of other possibilities, a journey to a new and unfamiliar landscape. After reading this beautiful and extraordinarily wise book, readers may find themselves catching a literary version of Tokarczuk’s travel bug, seeking—in an image that recurs throughout the novel—the edge of the world, where the celestial spheres and all the stars of the firmament can be seen, stretching into the infinite.
recur
VERB复发;重现;再次发生 If something recurs, it happens more than once.
celestial
ADJ 天体的;天空的;天的 Celestial is used to describe things relating to heaven or to the sky.
firmament
N-SING 天;天空;苍穹 The firmament is the sky or heaven.
资料来源：
https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2018/july/flights-olga-tokarczuk?dt_dapp=1
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