The winter holiday is approaching, and the Spring Festival is also approaching. In the uncertain post-epidemic era, instead of being disturbed by the noise of the outside world, it is better to calm down and read more books and read well.
From the excellent works of Nobel Prize winners in literature in recent years, to the high-scoring books of Douban in 2020, to the 15 best English books of 2020 recommended by The New Yorker. We sort them out one by one for readers to choose from, and I wish you all good children's shoes a fulfilling and wonderful winter holiday!
Outstanding works of recent Nobel Prize winners in literature
In 2020
Winner: Louise Glick
Masterpiece: "Until it reflects the deepest needs of the soul"
Reason for the award: For her irrefutable poetic voice, which makes the existence of the individual universal with simple beauty.
In 2019
Winner: Peter Handke
Masterpiece: "The Tragic Song of Desirelessness"
Why he was awarded: His linguistic originality and influence explore the breadth and character of the human experience.
In 2017
Winner: Kazuo Ishiguro
Representative works: "Mountains and Landscapes", "Ukiyo-e", "Long Days Are Coming to an End"
Why he won the award: His novels have powerful emotional power to open up the abyss of illusory that we connect with the world.
In 2016
Winner: Bob Dylan
Masterpiece: "The Poems of Bob Dylan"
Reason for Award: Creating new poetic expressions with traditional American songs.
In 2015
Laureate: Svetlana Alekseevich
Masterpiece: "Secondhand Time"
Reason for the award: A work of diverse voices, a monument to the suffering and courage of our time.
In 2014
Winner: Patrick Modiano
Masterpieces: "Dark Shop Street", "Star Square", "Youth Cafe"
Reason for the award: He used the art of memory to show the most difficult to grasp of the fate of mankind and the world in which people lived during the German occupation.
In 2013
Winner: Alice Munro (female)
Masterpieces: "Happy Shadow Dance" and "Escape"
Reason for the award: Master of contemporary short stories.
In 2012
Winner: Mo Yan
Masterpieces: "Red Sorghum", "Milk and Fat Buttocks", "Frog"
Reason for the award: Writing with illusionistic realism that blends folktales, history and contemporary society.
Douban 2020 high-scoring book
The New Yorker's 2020 Best New Yorker books of 15
The New Yorker recommends 15 good books, both fiction and non-fiction, both new and published for many years, and each one is highly recommended by recommenders. It is recommended that students who learn English read the original version carefully.
Content from The Best Books We Read in 2020
001 Cleanness
by Garth Greenwell
The casual grandeur of Garth Greenwell’s prose, unfurling in page-long paragraphs and elegantly garrulous sentences, tempts the vulnerable reader into danger zones: traumatic memories, extreme sexual scenarios, states of paralyzing heartbreak and loss. In the case of “Cleanness,” Greenwell’s third work of fiction, I initially curled up with the book, savoring the sensuous richness of the writing, and then I found myself sweating a little, uncomfortably invested in the rawness of the scene. The cause was a story titled “Gospodar,” in which the narrator, an American teacher living in Bulgaria, hooks up with a man who begins by play-acting violence and then veers toward the real thing. The transition from fantasy to horror is accomplished with the deftness of a literary magician, and Greenwell repeats the feat even more unnervingly in a later story, “The Little Saint,” in which his likable narrator takes the role of the aggressor rather than the victim. These stories are masterpieces of radical eroticism, but they wouldn’t have the same impact if they didn’t appear in a gorgeously varied narrative fabric, amid scenes of more wholesome love, finely sketched vistas of political unrest, haunting evocations of a damaged childhood, and moments of mundane rapture. Tenderness, violence, animosity, and compassion are the outer edges of what feels like a total map of the human condition. —Alex Ross
The casual grandeur of Garth Greenville's prose, unfolding in one-page long paragraphs and elegant rap sentences, tempts vulnerable readers into danger zones: traumatic memories, extreme sexual scenes, paralyzed heartbreaks, and lost states. In the case of Greenville's third novel, The Clean, at first I curled up in the book, savoring the sensory richness of the work, then I found myself sweating a little and uneasily immersed in the roughness of the scene. The cause is a story called "Gospodar", the narrator of which is an American teacher living in Bulgaria who hooks up with a man who plays violence at first and later turns to the real thing. The transition from fantasy to horror was accomplished through the skilful skill of literary magicians, a feat that Greenwell repeated more disturbingly in his later story, The Little Saint, in which his lovable narrator played the role of an aggressor rather than a victim. These stories are masterpieces of radical eroticism, but they wouldn't have the same impact if they hadn't come in gorgeous and diverse narrative structures, in healthier love scenes, in the elaborately sketched vistas of political turmoil, in lingering memories of damaged childhoods, in mundane moments of ecstasy. Tenderness, violence, hostility and sympathy are the periphery of what feels like a general map of the human condition. - Alex Ross
002 Stranger Faces
by Namwali Serpell
