停電の夜に (新潮文庫) [文庫]

   9つの短い物語からなる短篇集。どの物語も読んだあとに、繊細な、人の心のひだに確かに触れたと思う感触と切ない余韻が残って、読後感がとてもいい。

   登場するのは一旗あげるためにインドから米国へ移民してきた人たちで、著者ラヒリにとっては父母の世代にあたるインド系1世と、その子ども世代。だから物語はインドと米国の間を行ったり来たりしながら展開する。

   さりげなく書き込まれる料理、スパイスのにおい、衣装や装飾、そして夫婦間のやりとりといった文化の機微のなかに、ひとりひとりの人物像が鮮やかに、しかし淡々とした筆致で描かれていく。どの物語にも共通するのは、インドにはあったけれど米国にはない濃密な人間関係、その喪失感とそのために起きる心の揺らぎや戸惑い、身の置きどころのなさといったものだ。

   たとえば最初に出てくる「停電の夜に」は、初めての子どもを死産した夫婦が、停電の夜に秘密の告白を始める物語で、そのゲームで夫婦のすきまが埋まるかもしれないと期待して読んでいくと、あっけない幕切れを迎えることになる。そのほか、バングラデシュ独立戦争のテレビニュースを、その土地に家族を残してきた客と見た少女時代の思い出「ビルザダさんが食事に来たころ」や、米国から子連れでインドへ観光旅行にやってきた倦怠期の夫婦をタクシー運転手が案内する「病気の通訳」、登場人物を絡ませながら2つの不倫を正反対の立場から巧みに描く「セクシー」など、いずれも男と女のすれちがう感情や考え方が、しなやかな、しかも抑制の利いた文章でつづられている。

   著者ジュンパ・ラヒリは1967年ロンドン生まれの米国在住の作家。カルカッタ出身の父親は、本書を締めくくる「三度目で最後の大陸」の主人公のように、大学図書館に勤めていたという。このデビュー作でO・ヘンリー賞、PEN/ヘミングウェイ賞など数々の賞に輝き、ピューリッツァー賞まで受賞した期待の新人である。（森 望） --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

A debut collection of short fiction blends elements of Indian traditions with the complexities of American culture in such tales as "A Temporary Matter," in which a young Indian-American couple confronts their grief over the loss of a child, while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. Original. 20,000 first printing. --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

Pulitzer-winning, scintillating studies in yearning and exile from a Bengali Bostonian woman of immense promise. A couple exchange unprecedented confessions during nightly blackouts in their Boston apartment as they struggle to cope with a heartbreaking loss; a student arrives in new lodgings in a mystifying new land and, while he awaits the arrival of his arranged-marriage wife from Bengal, he finds his first bearings with the aid of the curious evening rituals that his centenarian landlady orchestrates; a schoolboy looks on while his childminder finds that the smallest dislocation can unbalance her new American life all too easily and send her spiralling into nostalgia for her homeland! Jhumpa Lahiri's prose is beautifully measured, subtle and sober, and she is a writer who leaves a lot unsaid, but this work is rich in observational detail, evocative of the yearnings of the exile (mostly Indians in Boston here), and full of emotional pull and reverberation. --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

毎夜1時間の停電の夜に、ロウソクの灯りのもとで隠し事を打ち明けあう若夫婦―「停電の夜に」。観光で訪れたインドで、なぜか夫への内緒事をタクシー運転手に打ち明ける妻―「病気の通訳」。夫婦、家族など親しい関係の中に存在する亀裂を、みずみずしい感性と端麗な文章で表す9編。ピュリツァー賞など著名な文学賞を総なめにした、インド系新人作家の鮮烈なデビュー短編集。

ロウソクの灯されたキッチンで、停電の夜ごと秘密を打ち明けあう若い夫婦-。ボストンとカルカッタを舞台にコミカルで切ない日常のドラマを繊細な筆致で描く。ピュリツァー賞ほか受賞。インド系作家の全9篇。〈ソフトカバー〉 --このテキストは、 単行本 版に関連付けられています。

Mr. Kapasi, the protagonist of Jhumpa Lahiri's title story, would certainly have his work cut out for him if he were forced to interpret the maladies of all the characters in this eloquent debut collection. Take, for example, Shoba and Shukumar, the young couple in "A Temporary Matter" whose marriage is crumbling in the wake of a stillborn child. Or Miranda in "Sexy," who is involved in a hopeless affair with a married man. But Mr. Kapasi has problems enough of his own; in addition to his regular job working as an interpreter for a doctor who does not speak his patients' language, he also drives tourists to local sites of interest. His fare on this particular day is Mr. and Mrs. Das--first-generation Americans of Indian descent--and their children. During the course of the afternoon, Mr. Kapasi becomes enamored of Mrs. Das and then becomes her unwilling confidant when she reads too much into his profession. "I told you because of your talents," she informs him after divulging a startling secret.

I'm tired of feeling so terrible all the time. Eight years, Mr. Kapasi, I've been in pain eight years. I was hoping you could help me feel better; say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy.

Of course, Mr. Kapasi has no cure for what ails Mrs. Das--or himself. Lahiri's subtle, bittersweet ending is characteristic of the collection as a whole. Some of these nine tales are set in India, others in the United States, and most concern characters of Indian heritage. Yet the situations Lahiri's people face, from unhappy marriages to civil war, transcend ethnicity. As the narrator of the last story, "The Third and Final Continent," comments: "There are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept." In that single line Jhumpa Lahiri sums up a universal experience, one that applies to all who have grown up, left home, fallen in or out of love, and, above all, experienced what it means to be a foreigner, even within one's own family. --Alix Wilber
--このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

The rituals of traditional Indian domesticityAcurry-making, hair-vermilioningAboth buttress the characters of Lahiri's elegant first collection and mark the measure of these fragile people's dissolution. Frequently finding themselves in Cambridge, Mass., or similar but unnamed Eastern seaboard university towns, Lahiri's characters suffer on an intimate level the dislocation and disruption brought on by India's tumultuous political history. Displaced to the States by her husband's appointment as a professor of mathematics, Mrs. Sen (in the same-named story) leaves her expensive and extensive collection of saris folded neatly in the drawer. The two things that sustain her, as the little boy she looks after every afternoon notices, are aerograms from homeAwritten by family members who so deeply misunderstand the nature of her life that they envy herAand the fresh fish she buys to remind her of Calcutta. The arranged marriage of "This Blessed House" mismatches the conservative, self-conscious Sanjeev with ebullient, dramatic TwinkleAa smoker and drinker who wears leopard-print high heels and takes joy in the plastic Christian paraphernalia she discovers in their new house. In "A Real Durwan," the middle-class occupants of a tenement in post-partition Calcutta tolerate the rantings of the stair-sweeper Boori Ma. Delusions of grandeur and lament for what she's lostA"such comforts you cannot even dream them"Agive her an odd, Chekhovian charm but ultimately do not convince her bourgeois audience that she is a desirable fixture in their up-and-coming property. Lahiri's touch in these nine tales is delicate, but her observations remain damningly accurate, and her bittersweet stories are unhampered by nostalgia. Foreign rights sold in England, France and Germany; author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the charters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of cultures and generations. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession.
--このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE 2000
"Jhumpha Lahiri is the kind of writer who makes you want to grab the first person you see and say 'Read this!' She's a dazzling storyteller with a distinctive voice , an eye for nuance , an ear for irony. She is one of the finest short story writers I've read." AMY TAN

"Another side of India emerges when Lahiri sets her stories solely in Calcutta - where her protaganists are not Harvard academics but stair sweepers and outcasts. The nostalgic mist of homesickness lifted, India emerges raw, chaotic and often harsh...After reading three of these stories, I found myself rationing the remaining six, to try to make the book last longer. A lovely collection." Victoria Miller, SCOTSMAN

"The genius of Jhumpha Lahiri's storytelling lies in her restrained drollery, her eye for details, and her tone of wise consolation." Anthony Quinn, HARPERS & QUEEN

"Dazzling writing...Simply put, Lahiri displays a remarkable maturity and ability to imagine other lives. Each story offers something special." USA TODAY

"Strong, subtle...a debut to relish." GUARDIAN

"Jhumpa Lahiri's strength as a writer stems partly from her ability to delineate in telling detail the mores of bith societies... There are at the moment many good writers of Indian origin who recall with troubled nostalgia a past they do not want to return to but somehow hope to resolve by explaining it in fictional form. Lahiri joind the ranks of those whose work goes further and illuminates human nature in general." TLS --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

Jhumpa Lahiri is the winner of numerous awards, including the 2000 Pulizer Prize, Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year, and The New Yorker's best Debut of the Year Award
--このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

ラヒリ,ジュンパ
1967年ロンドン生れ。両親ともカルカッタ出身のベンガル人。幼少時に渡米し、アメリカのロードアイランド州で成長する。’99年、「病気の通訳」がO・ヘンリー賞受賞。同作収録の短編集『停電の夜に』でPEN/ヘミングウェイ賞、ニューヨーカー新人賞ほかを独占し、鮮列なデビューを飾る。2000年4月には、新人作家としてはきわめて異例ながらピュリツァー賞を受賞し、一躍全米の注目を集めた

小川 高義
1956年横浜生れ。東大大学院修士課程修了。横浜市立大学助教授(本データはこの書籍が刊行された当時に掲載されていたものです)