我在2022年给自己立了一个flag：至少完整阅读10本英文原著。

目前读完的：

上周读完了第7本：

A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS

书名：A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS

作者：V. S. NAIPAUL

出版时间：1961

我的阅读时间：2022.4.21-2022.5.3

忘了是怎么挑到这本书的了，貌似是在The Good Reads网站上找到的。

书名里的Mr Biswas是这本书的主人公，他短暂的一辈子都生活在Trinidad。作者本人也出生在Trinidad上，后来上了牛津大学，毕业之后开启了写作生涯。

所以，我拿到书后的第一个疑问是：Trinidad到底在哪里？

从世界地图上看，Trinidad离南美洲东北角委内瑞拉很近，是一个岛国。

Mr Biswas是印度裔，出身为婆罗门，但家里没什么钱。他的父亲靠做苦力为生，养活妻子和三个儿子。

Mr Biswas的父亲早逝，他没上大学，17岁时在当地镇上的Tulsis家族商店打工，意外和the Tulsis家族的一个女儿结婚，从此过上了和这个家族的捆绑生活。

The Tulsis家族有房产、有商店、有土地，是当地的“富豪”。家族里里里外外有30几号人，全部住在一座叫the Hanuman House的房子里。家族由Mrs. Tulsis掌管，家里的几十号人分别是她的姐妹和她们的家庭、她的两个儿子、十几个女儿和她们各自的家庭。

大家族的外壳给里面的每一个人提供了保护，他们不用担心吃饭穿衣，他们的小孩有钱上学，所以很多人心甘情愿待在这个壳里。为了待在the Hanuman House，女性需要洗衣做饭，打扫卫生，照看店面，男性则需要打杂、下田监工，干体力活。

一家子住在一起，犹如一个小小的江湖，明争暗斗，攀比，排挤，打斗等一样不少。几乎每个人都在努力朝权力中心 -- Mrs Tulsis和她的两个儿子 -- 靠近。

Mr Biswas是个例外，他像一块棱角分明的石头，个性鲜明，几次跟Mrs Tulsis对着干。他管the Hanuman House叫做trap，拖住了他的青春，偷走了他的前程。

The world was too small, the Tulsi family too large. He felt trapped.

He was “trapped” in a “hole”. “Trap,” she heard him say over and over. “That’s what you and your family do to me. Trap me in this hole.”

The hero, trapped into marriage, burdened with a family, his youth gone.

“Trapped!” Mr. Biswas would say. “You and your family have got me trapped in this hole.”

但每每想到自己所谓的未来，他感到惶恐，感到茫然：事业似乎已经到头，孩子还没长大。

The future he feared could not be thought of in terms of time. It was a blankness, a void like those in dreams, into which, past tomorrow and next week and next year, he was falling.

The future he feared was upon him. He was falling into the void, and that terror, known only in dreams, was with him as he lay awake at nights, hearing the snores and creaks and the occasional cries of babies from the other rooms.

He sank into despair as into the void which, in his imagining, had always stood for the life he had yet to live. Night after night he sank. But there was now no quickening panic, no knot of anguish. He discovered in himself only a great unwillingness, and that part of his mind which feared the consequences of such a withdrawal was increasingly stilled.

他一心想着存钱，自己建房子或买房子住，为此受到了妻子的鄙视和孩子的疏远。他们可不愿意离开the Hanuman House。

经过几十年的艰辛，他终于住上了自己的房子，但发现自己竟错过了孩子的童年。买房子的债还没还完，就因为心脏病去世。

Somehow, as Mrs. Tulsi had said in the hall of Hanuman House when Savi was born, they would survive: they couldn’t be killed. Then he thought: “I have missed their childhoods.”

我之前去过印度，知道印度教的大家庭喜欢住在一起。比如一个家里有两个儿子，这两个儿子结婚之后还是会和父母住在一起。

我去的那个家庭，家里有两个儿子，其中一个儿子在另一个城市工作，但节假日他们都会回到父母家（印度的节假日+年假超级多！）。家里至少有7个人，住的是自建房，一共有三层。

他们家第1层有一个很大的厨房，但顶楼也有一个小厨房。我问我朋友，3楼那个厨房是给谁用的？她说这家人都吃素，但其中一个儿媳妇不是素食主义者，所以3楼那个厨房是专门给她用的，我惊呆了。

在这本书里，我遇到的生词特别多，节选几个出镜率比较高的词：

helluva

“This is a helluva man. When a man is married he shouldn’t expect other people to feed him. In fact, he should be feeding his wife. ”

“This is a helluva man,” Misir said. “You want to convert three hundred million Hindus and you let one backward little family of country bookies frighten you?”

“My son is a helluva man. I feel that something is seriously wrong with him."

“I will have to get some labour. Helluva thing these days, getting good labour.” He spoke the word with relish.

menial

It was soon established that Mr. Biswas, like Hari, was too incompetent, and too intelligent, to be given the menial tasks of the other brothers-in-law. He was deputed to have disputations with the pundits in the drawingroom.

They spoke no Hindi, used the grossest English dialect and the coarsest expressions and vied with one another in doing menial jobs and getting themselves dirty. In this way they sealed the family bond for the day.

defy

“Well, fourteen months younger,” Shama said, directing her annoyance to Savi. “You want to defy me?”

“Your father is a damn funny sort of man. Behaving as though he own the place. Let me tell you that when you children born your father couldn’t feed you. Ask him. And see the gratitude I get? Everybody defying me these days. Or you don’t know?”

nondescript

On Boxing-day he visited his brothers; they had married nondescript women from nondescript families and spent Christmas with their wives.

Negligible, nondescript people yesterday, each now had to be considered individually.

Messages were sent and Sharma’s relations turned up in the afternoon, nondescript people, not able even in their sorrow to drown their shyness.

intervening

In the setting sun, the sad dusk, with Bipti working in a garden that looked, for a moment, like a garden he had known a dark time ages ago, the intervening years fell away.

They were kissed; they burst into new tears and feverishly attempted to introduce those of their children who had been born in the intervening years.

scathing

Scathing was one of his favourite words, and the person he had handled most scathingly was Krishna Menon.

“That’s the one I had in mind,” Mr. Biswas said. “Don’t say you think that pretty.”

Owad replied scathingly, “I think so.”

Journals had been coming to him by almost every post from England, and drug samples, which he displayed proudly, though sometimes with scathing comments.

His appetite for talk was insatiable, his dramatic gifts never failed, and the comments he made on the people he had met were invariably scathing.

This was clearly one of Owad’s scathing comments. Shekhar smiled and grunted.