读书会：讨论韩江的《我们分不开》

我是吉尔伯特·克鲁兹，《纽约时报书评》的编辑，这里是书评播客。每月最后一个星期五，我们都会带来书评读书俱乐部节目，这是一场由MJ·富兰克林主持的圆桌讨论，探讨一本新书或旧作。上个月，我们讨论了萨曼莎·哈维的《轨道》，该书获得了2024年布克奖。而这个月，我们将讨论最新出版的英文小说，也是诺贝尔文学奖最新得主——香港的作品。接下来交给MJ·富兰克林。

I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the book review podcast. Every month on the last Friday of the month, we come to you with our book review book club, which is a roundtable discussion about a title, new or old, that is hosted by MJ Franklin. Last month, we discussed Samantha Harvey's Orbital, which won the 2024 Booker Prize. And this month, we have the latest novel to be published in English and the most recent winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, Hong Kong. I'll let MJ Franklin take it from here.

大家好，欢迎收听书评播客的又一期读书俱乐部节目。我是MJ·富兰克林，《纽约时报书评》的编辑。在本月的书评读书俱乐部中，我们将讨论韩江的《我们分不开》，由E·叶焕和佩吉·阿尼亚·莫里斯翻译。

Hello, and welcome to another book club episode of the book review podcast. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm an editor here at the New York Times Book Review. And for this month's Book Review Book Club, we're talking about We Do Not Part by Han Gong and translated by E. Yehwan and Paige Aniyah Morris.

这本书仿佛是宇宙在指引我们去阅读。首先，去年韩江2016年的小说《素食者》被《纽约时报》评为21世纪最佳图书之一。几个月后，韩江又获得了诺贝尔文学奖，成为首位获此殊荣的韩国作家。紧接着在2025年1月，《我们分不开》在美国出版。这一切都像是命运在催促我们深入韩江的作品。

This felt like a book that the universe was just telling us to read. First, last year, Han's 2016 novel, The Vegetarian, was named one of the New York Times' best books of the twenty first century. A few months after that, Han won the Nobel Prize in literature, becoming the first South Korean writer to receive that honor. And then a few months after that, in January 2025, We Do Part was released in The US. So it felt like we were just getting all of these signs to dive into Han's work.

命运在召唤，我们响应了。我们选择《我们分不开》作为读书俱乐部的推荐书目，今天就是要讨论这本书。参与讨论的还有我两位出色的同事——劳伦·克里斯坦森和艾米丽·艾肯。劳伦和艾米丽之前都参加过读书俱乐部。

Life spoke. We listened. We made We Do Not Part our book club pick, and that is what we're here today to discuss. And joining me in that conversation are two of my incredible colleagues, Lauren Christensen and Emily Aiken. Both Lauren and Emily have joined the book club before.

劳伦上次来是在2024年底，讨论《像这样的小事》；艾米丽则在2025年初来讨论《我们的夜晚》。劳伦、艾米丽，欢迎你们再次到来，感谢你们的参与。

Lauren was here last a few months ago, I think at the end of 2024 to talk about small things like these, And Emily was here a few months ago at the start of 2025 to talk about our evenings. Lauren, Emily, thank you for coming back. Thank you for being here.

谢谢邀请，很荣幸能来。

Thanks for having us. It's a pleasure.

另外，劳伦，我要稍微透露一下——听众朋友们，劳伦的新书《初生》刚在三月初出版，这本书震撼人心、感人至深，别犹豫，赶紧去读吧！

Also, Lauren, I'm gonna blow up your spot just a little bit, but I have to tell listeners, listeners, Lauren has a new book that just came out, First Born. It came out earlier this March, and it is powerful and moving, and don't walk, run to go read this book.

谢谢你，MJ。

Thank you, MJ.

以上就是我们的全明星阵容。在进入正式讨论前，照例先说明几点注意事项。节目最后我们将揭晓四月的共读书目，所以请坚持听到最后。另外本次对话会涉及剧透内容。

So that is our all star lineup. Before we jump into the conversation, I want to, as always, share some admin notes up top. At the end of the episode, we will reveal our April book. So stay with us until the end to find out what we're reading next. And then, as always, there will be spoilers in this conversation.

我们希望能深入探讨这本书——分析它的叙事脉络、结局处理手法，以及那些模棱两可的情节。若有所保留就无法真正展开讨论。因此建议：若想保持阅读新鲜感，请暂停收听先读完本书；若已读过或不介意剧透，就让我们开始深度解析吧。

We just wanna have a robust discussion about this book. We wanna talk about its movements and how it lands and the questions of what even happens, and we can't really dig in if we're holding back. So we just wanted to pause and say, if you wanna go into this book completely fresh, pause this episode, read the book, come back to us. And if you don't care about spoilers or if you've already read the book, let's do it. Let's dive in.

作为开场，谁能用电梯演讲的方式简要概括下《我们不分开》的故事主线？

To get us started, could someone give us a brief elevator pitch synopsis? What is we do not part about?

本书开篇采用了书评人告诫小说家慎用的手法——梦境叙述。主人公Kyun的噩梦场景中，无数如人形般的黑色树干伫立雪中，随后被潮水般的洪水淹没至膝。我们得知Kyun是位作家，这个梦境与她四年前所写关于1980年光州事件的书籍有关，当时亲民主学生运动遭军方镇压。

So this book opens with a move that our reviewer said is a no no for fiction writers, which is the account of a dream. This is a dream by the narrator, a woman named Kyun It's a nightmare, really, involving rows and rows of black tree trunks, like like so many human beings, covered with thick white falling snow. And over the course of the dream, the tree trunks are inundated with water as if by a tidal wave. And as Kyun runs among the tree trunks, the water rises up to her knees. So we learned that Kyun is a is a writer, and she associates this dream with a book that she wrote four years earlier about a massacre in the Korean city of Gwangju in 1980 in which pro democracy student activists were killed by the military.

这本书彻底改变了她的人生轨迹——与家人疏离（虽未详述家庭情况，但可知她有个年幼女儿），如今独居首尔公寓，每日仅食一餐，足不出户，终日反复修改遗嘱，形同行尸走肉。

This book has profoundly affected her so much so that she's estranged from her family. We don't really know much about her family, but we know she has a young daughter. And she's living now alone in an apartment in Seoul. She seems to be barely alive. She eats a meal a day.

唯一知晓这个梦境的是她的旧友In Sun——一位从纪录片导演转行木匠的女性。她们曾共事杂志社时约定：In Sun要雕刻百根黑木桩，将其植入济州岛家附近的雪地并拍摄整个艺术装置。但这个计划无疾而终，直到某天In Sun突然发来信息，召唤Kyun前往首尔某家医院。

She never leaves her apartment. She spends her free time writing and rewriting her will. But she has one friend who knows about this dream, a woman named In Sun, a documentary filmmaker turned woodworker with whom Kyun has collaborated in the past when they both worked for a magazine. And at one point, they seemed to have had an agreement that they would try to realize Kyun dream by carving, In Sun would carve about a 100 logs, paint them black, embed them in a field near her home on the rural island of Jeju, and then film the entire installation with when the snow falls. But this plan seems to have been abandoned, and the two women haven't been in touch until suddenly In sun sends Kyun a text message out of the blue, summoning her to a hospital in Seoul.

Kyun匆忙赶往医院，在那里她得知In sun遭遇了一场严重事故。在济州岛的木工坊工作时，她完全切断了两个手指。Kyun这才意识到In sun一直秘密进行着这个梦想项目。随后In sun提出一个重大请求：她希望Kyun立即向Jeju撒谎，去救她的宠物鸟——如果一天内得不到食物和水，鸟儿就会死去。

Kyun rushes to the hospital and there she learns that In sun has had a terrible accident. She severed two of her fingers completely while working in her woodworking shop on Jeju Island. And Kyun realizes that In Sun has been working in secret on this dream project all this time. And In Sun then asks for a huge favor. She wants Kyun to lie immediately to Jeju, to rescue her pet bird, which will die if it doesn't get food and water within a day.

于是Kyun即刻启程，小说的剩余部分以愈发超现实的手法记述了她在济州岛的遭遇：先是遭遇猛烈的暴风雪，在肆虐的、令人目眩的暴风雪中艰难抵达In sun的住所；随后又深陷济州岛大屠杀的历史中——1948至1949年间，韩国军队以涉嫌共党同情者为由屠杀了数千平民。这一切都发生在朝鲜战争前夕。

And so Kyun immediately embarks on this trip, and the rest of the novel is an increasingly surreal account of what happens on Jeju Island as Kyun navigates first a severe snowstorm, this kind of raging, blinding blizzard to get to In Sun's house, and then is plunged into the history of Jeju's own massacre, which involved the killing of thousands of civilians in 1948 and 1949 who were suspected of being communist sympathizers by the Korean military. And all of this was in the lead up to the Korean War.

说得太精彩了。这是本棘手的书，篇幅虽短却蕴含着多层次的内容。

That is beautifully said. And this is a tricky book because it's a short book, but there is so much happening in so many different layers.

要整合这些内容实在困难。确实非常难，等我们讨论到文体元素时应该会涉及——它的叙事是非线性的。很难厘清事件的时间线：我们处于现在还是过去？

It's such a hard lot to synthesize. It was very hard, and I guess we'll we'll get to this when we talk about the sort of stylistic elements, but but it does not move in a linear fashion. So it is hard to piece together what happens when. Are we in the present? Are we in the past?

所以Emily你做得太棒了。

So great job, Emily.

是啊，谢谢。

Yeah. Thank you.

谢谢。我们必须强调这是本充满诗意与智慧的书，同时也极具冲击力。它同时具备多种罕见特质，且采用非线性叙事。读者需要时间适应这种叙事方式，尤其对美国读者而言——这些历史事件对多数美国人来说都很陌生。

Thank you. We should we should stress this is a poetic and brainy book. It's also a visceral book. It's a lot of unusual things at once, and it is not a linear narrative. It takes some adjusting to to orient yourself, especially, I think, if you're an American reader, because a lot of these events will be unfamiliar to most Americans.

但同时，我也认为对于非美国读者而言，这段历史是如此——我想书中也探讨了这一点——被极度压抑，既因为遗体未能归乡，也因讨论此事曾是禁忌，直到后来才逐渐开放。我觉得这本书的部分使命就是揭开这段历史。但在深入之前，我想先做个简单的氛围调查。

But then also, I think to non American readers too, this history was so and I think this is explored in the book. This history was so suppressed both because bodies weren't returned. It was taboo to discuss it, and slowly, there was an opening up. I feel like a part of the project of this book is to unpack this history. But before we get into that, I just wanna do a temperature check.

我想请在座各位轮流说说最直观的总体感受。你们对《我们不分离》有什么看法？

I just wanna go around the table and just get top level general thoughts. What did you think of We Do Not Part?

我被其中抒情诗般的、如艾米丽所言的对两位女性各自承受的深切悲痛的描绘深深打动。那种哀伤与苦难。庆娥，如艾米丽提到的，每天只吃一顿饭。她始终被神秘的偏头痛折磨，吃下的东西全都会吐出来，头部持续承受剧痛，甚至显得有自杀倾向。但正是朋友召唤她去解决某个问题，给了她继续前行的理由。

I was incredibly moved by the lyrical poetic, as Emily said, descriptions of the intense grief that both of these women have endured for their own reasons. Grief and suffering. Kyunga, Emily mentioned, eats one meal a day. She is suffering throughout from these mysterious migraines that make her throw up everything she eats. She is in excruciating pain in her head all the time and to the point where she seems suicidal, but there's this this hole to fix a problem that her friend has called her to fix.

而恩熙则追忆她逝去的母亲——那位在1948年济州岛大屠杀中幸存的孩子（或年轻女性），她近乎档案整理般重现母亲那些骇人的痛苦记忆，在此过程中展现出女儿对母亲深沉的爱。这本书虽然主要场景（至少当下时间线）设置在荒凉之地，人烟稀少，角色互动有限，但我却真切感受到了其中浓郁的人情与情感。

And that is really what just keeps her continuing on. And then Ensign remembering her mother who who died, who lived through the Jeju massacre in 1948 as a child or as a as a young woman recovering in an almost archivistic way her mother's really horrifically painful memories and in the process revealing this beautiful love that a daughter has for her mother. I mean, I was so moved by the human relationships in this book that is pretty largely takes place, at least in the present, in a very desolate landscape. It's quite unpopulated. And so for for a a book that does not have a lot of characters or human interaction, I felt that the love and emotion was really there for me.

你提到荒凉感很有意思，我完全同意。部分故事发生在首尔对吧？但那种荒芜感或许源于角色内心世界的投射，使得环境仿佛成为他们精神世界的折射镜。

That's really interesting to hear you say about because I completely agree that there is a desolate landscape ish. Right? Because part of it takes place in Seoul. Right? At least it's think that the landscape is so desolate because these characters are, and then there's a sense of their interiority feels refracted throughout the environment.

此外岛上之所以荒凉，既因暴风雪肆虐，也因这是个有人居住的岛屿。书中对环境与角色心理状态、精神境界的交互呈现非常精妙，我觉得这种层次相当复杂。

Also on this island, it's desolate because there's a snowstorm, but also, like, it's an island people live on. And so the the play with that that the the environment and their mental states and their spiritual states, and I I I thought it was very complex.

我实在迫不及待想听听各位对第二部分的解读了。

I and I really top level, can't wait to get into what you guys made of the second section.

哦，我们会到达那里的。我很兴奋。

Oh, we'll get there. I'm excited.

颠倒过来。不过我想先多谈谈第一部分，因为这是真实的。这些女性之间有着某种无法割舍的纽带。书名本身，我认为是在书的末尾才揭晓的。'我们不分离'是她们决定给这个项目起的名字，这是Kunya梦想在济州岛实际日志中的实现。

Upside down. I wanna talk more about the first section, though, first, because it's true. These women have this sort of inextricable bond. The title itself is revealed, I think, toward the end of the book. We do not part is the name they decide to give to this project, which is the realization of Kunya's dream in actual logs in Jeju Island.

但这些女性也存在于一种深刻的孤独之中。对吧？作家在她的公寓里几乎奄奄一息。而In Sun，在这个乡村地区独自一人在这个工作坊里，她的母亲已经去世了。所以她们都处于各自的世界，却又通过这段历史，这段被掩埋的历史，有着这样的联系。

But these women also exist in a kind of profound solitude. Right? The writer in her apartment where she's barely alive. And In Sun, on this in this rural area alone in this workshop, her mother has died. She so they're both in their sort of own worlds and yet have this connection through this history, this buried history.

但我发现既令人非常困惑，又最终决定非常美丽，我必须适应的是这本书还有一种静态的特质，我认为这些都嵌入在那个最初的梦中，那是一个反复出现的梦。你会看到这些元素，它们也是颜色。所以有这些黑色的，被涂成黑色的树干。这个想法是它们不知怎么被涂成了黑色。然后纯净的白雪落在它们上面，还有水。

But one of the things that I found both very disorienting, and then I decided very beautiful, that I had to adjust to was this there's also a static quality to the book, which is I think all embedded in that original dream, which is a recurring dream. And you see these elements, and they're also colors. So there's these black, there's painted black tree trunks. That's the idea is that somehow they've been painted black. And this pristine white snow falling on them, and then the water.

所以你有雪、树干和水，还有血。红色的血是一个反复出现的意象，既通过Insan在工作坊中经历的伤口，也有其他涉及血的事件。所以这些是这本书的颜色，对我来说感觉有点像一幅画。对你来说也是这样吗，就像我们是从一幅画开始，然后必须继续推进？

So you have the snow, the tree trunks, and the water, and also blood. The red blood is a recurring sort of image both through the wound that Insan experiences in the workshop, and there are other incidents involving blood. So those were the colors of the book, and it and it felt a little bit to me like a painting. Did it feel that way to you as if we're starting with a painting that we have to push on?

对我来说，想到的不是一幅画。只是一种普遍的朦胧感。对我来说，它有一种物质性。实际上，我在查阅一个采访，Hong Kong说她想在这本书中特别处理轻盈的事物。雪、光、水、影。

For me, it wasn't a painting that came to mind. It was just a general haze. Like, for me, there was a materiality to it. And, actually, I was looking up an interview, and and Hong Kong said that she wanted to, in this book, work with specifically light things. Snow, light, water, shadow.

鸟。用鸟来传达这个非常沉重的谜。所以我觉得这非常有趣。但对我来说，想到的是雾的质地，而不是一幅画。但听你谈论树木的鲜明黑色或血的红色，她也对图像、细节、色彩和活力有着如此敏锐的眼光。

Birds. Birds to convey this very heavy mystery. And so I thought that was really interesting. But for me, the the the texture of a fog, it came to mind rather than a painting. But listening to you talk about, like, the vivid black of the trees or the red of the blood is also she has such an eye for image and detail and color and vibrancy.

而且它也非常简约。就像她在使用这四种颜色的调色板工作，正如书中描述的两位女性形象一样，她们的描写极为精简。她们非常务实、低调，不张扬。她们的衣物简约而宽松。

And it's also very pared down. It's like she's working in a palette of these four colors just as the women both women in the book are when she's describing them physically, they're very pared down. They're very practical, unobtrusive. They're not flashy. Their clothes are minimal and loose.

我想我们知道In sun把开衫缝进了她唯一的外套里。这样做很时髦。时髦地。不知怎的，她给人一种时尚感，即使这些鲜艳的色彩展现出强烈的美学效果。但她正以一种极简主义的方式重新利用这些元素。

I think we know that In sun sews cardigans into her one coat. These are Stylishly so. Stylishly. Like, somehow she comes across as stylish even as these these vivid sort of colors come across as as very powerfully aesthetic. But there is a kind of minimalism that she's repurposing these elements.

所以雪不断出现。我认为它主要与死亡相关联

So snow keeps coming up. It's associated, I think, with death mostly in

这些东西。一种极简主义和二维性，我并不是在负面意义上说的。还有这两位女性反复出现的形象。Kyung不断观察她们的影子，以及在这个非常平淡的背景下，她们的影子如何相互交织。这几乎不像是人类的。

this stuff. A minimalism and a a two dimensionality, and I don't mean that in a negative way. There's there's also this recurring image of both of the women. Kyung is constantly watching their shadows and the ways in which their shadows interact with one another on this very plainer way. And it's it's almost not human.

她在观察，这种感觉几乎是普世的。这就是她观察人类互动的方式。

She's observing it it almost feels universal. Just this is the way she's watching how human beings interact.

我特别喜欢这本书的一点是，有时候你读一些书会感觉，哦，这本书教会了我用不同的方式看世界。读完这本书后，我更频繁地注意到了影子。什么覆盖在什么之上？当影子融合时，它们创造了什么新的图像？我注意到了空气和氛围的感觉。

One of the things I really loved about this book is I feel like you read books sometimes and you're like, oh, this has taught me how to see in a different way. I, after reading this, noticed shadows more often. What lays over top of each other? What new images do they create when shadows merge? I noticed, like, the feeling of the air and the atmosphere.

也许因为现在是春天，天气忽冷忽热，但在那些日子里，你就在户外，空气清新而不令人不适，你能感受到它轻抚你的皮肤。这本书在感官体验上如此丰富，让我深受触动

And, like, maybe it's because it's, like, spring right now where it's randomly hot and randomly cold, but, like, those days where it's just like you're outside and it's just crisp, not unpleasant, and you're just feeling that on your skin. Like, this book is so sensory in a way that I took away

非常具有触感。是的。我认为它极具触感，而且细节层次如此丰富。当你

with very tactile. Yes. I think it's very tactile, and there's so such a a level of minutiae. When you

刚才提到触感，当然让我想到贯穿始终的手指意象。比如角色们实际用手指触碰彼此，用手劳作。有一个关于恩善母亲的绝美场景——那是恩善回忆母亲年轻时，在那段可怕时期不幸失去妹妹的记忆。她看见妹妹躺在雪地里流血不止。

just said tactile, it, of course, made me think of this recurring motif of actual fingers throughout. Like, physically, the characters themselves touching each other, working with their hands. There's this beautiful, beautiful scene of Ensign's mother. It's a it's a memory that Ensign's recalling of her mother when she was young and tragically lost her baby sister during these this horrific period. And her sister she sees her sister on the snow bleeding out.

再次强调那个强烈的意象：鲜血浸染的白雪。没错。那是她年幼的妹妹，而恩善的母亲当时自己也是个孩子。用孩童的逻辑，这画面美得令人心碎。

So, again, to to bring back that that really intense imagery of just blood soaked white snow. Exactly. And it's it's her young young sister. And Ensign's mother is herself a child. And in a child's logic, it is so beautiful.

这让我几乎哽咽。她想到——我不确定是她咬破自己的手指还是割破——把流血的手指塞进妹妹嘴里让她吮吸，就像奶瓶或乳头。孩子天真地想着：妹妹失血这么多，我可以把我的血给她。

It's, like, gonna make me choke up. She she thinks to I don't know if she bites her own finger or somehow cuts her own finger and sticks her bleeding finger into her baby sister's mouth to suck on, almost like a bottle or something or a nipple. And thinking as a child, like, my my sister, she's look at how much blood she's losing. I can replace it for her. I can transfer mine.

后来母亲临终时，神志不清中仍本能地将手指塞进恩善嘴里，作为哺育的象征。而整部小说的关键事件就是恩善在木工坊自断手指。这个隐喻既直白又毫不生硬（无意双关），反而异常优雅。

And then her mother, as she's older, Inson's mother, when she's older and dying and on her deathbed and losing it, her instinct is to stick her finger in Inson's mouth as this symbol of nurturing. And then, of course, the whole inspiring incident of this novel is that Ensign chops off her finger in the in the carpentry studio. So it's quite literal, but it's it's not so it's not heavy handed, not to no pun intended. It's a really graceful it's a very graceful metaphor.

听你描述我浑身起鸡皮疙瘩。

I'm getting, like, chills hearing you talk about that.

这个伤口将我们与历史相连的力量很震撼。但我们必须看到恩善当下的伤口——她接受的治疗如此残酷。我猜这是最先进的疗法：为了让缝合的手指保持神经活性，每三分钟就要扎刺手指使其流血，确保血液循环。

And there's something really powerful that this wound also ties us to this history, but we need to see this the wound that Insun has in the present. We experience her present wound, and the treatment that she receives is so brutal. This is I don't I assume this is what happens. This is state of the art treatment. But in order for her sutured fingers to still work, the nerves to still function, they have to constantly, every three minutes, prick her finger so that she bleeds, so that blood flows through the whole nerve, the whole finger that's been re sutured.

因此有一种观点认为，施加痛苦本身就是一种关怀的形式。

And so there's this idea that the infliction of pain is a form of care.

但对我来说，这不仅仅是把施加痛苦视为关怀，而是我们必须注视。庆无法停止观看那些画面——虽然血腥，却无法移开视线。她在房间里面对茵时也是如此无法回避。茵顺必须感受这份痛苦。这不仅是为了确保她的手指痊愈，或者说确实是为了手指康复，但如果她感受不到疼痛会怎样？

But then also, for me, it's not just the infliction of pain as a form of care, but that we need to watch. Kyung can't stop looking at these images that she's like, it's gruesome, but I can't look away. And then the same when she's in the room with In she can't look away. In sun has to feel the pain. And it's not just to make sure that her fingers are or I guess it is to make sure her fingers are better, but what happens if she doesn't feel the pain?

如果她中断治疗会怎样？手指会坏死脱落。对吧？因为会腐烂。这真是个强有力的隐喻——我们必须感受这段历史。

What happens if she stops treatment? She loses the fingers. Right? Because they rot. And that is such a sense that's such a potent metaphor for the feeling of we have to feel this history.

我们必须痛苦地直面它，否则作为个人、作为民族，我们就会腐朽。

We have to painfully look at it because otherwise, we, as people, as a nation, rot.

或者说，谢天谢地我们能感受痛苦。否则我们

Or, like, thank god we feel pain. Otherwise, we

就会对骇人暴行完全麻木。这段历史仿佛正在复活，好让我们真正见证。我们不只是阅读记载，而是通过这些女性间接体验它。

become totally desensitized to horrific violence. It's almost like the this history is being resurrected so that we actually witness it. We're not just reading an account, but we're experiencing it indirectly via these women.

没错。每隔三分钟就被戳刺一次。是的。

Right. Every three minutes, it's being poked. Yep.

是的。所以

Yeah. So

我要回过头来直接问你。你觉得这本书怎么样？你喜欢它吗？热爱它吗？是的。

I'm gonna come back around and ask you very directly. What did you think about this book? Did you like it? Love it? Yeah.

这本书确实需要我花些时间适应，直到我读完并重读后，才真正体会到它结构上的精妙与优雅。尤其是中间部分——我很想和大家讨论——我感觉存在一个明显的转折点。小说的中段是一场暴风雪，我们深陷其中许久。MJ在开头就提到了迷雾，而这场暴风雪同样让人难以辨明方向。

It was it was it took me an adjustment to get into this book, and I think it was only when I went back after finishing it and reread it did I appreciate how expertly and elegantly it was structured. There were places where, especially in the middle, which I wanna discuss with you guys, because I feel like there's a real transition. The middle of the of the novel is a snowstorm, and we're in it for a long time. And MJ invoked that fog at the beginning. Well, this snowstorm is also very it's very hard to know where we're going.

一切都模糊不清：正在发生什么、谁还活着、谁已死去、谁能幸存。老实说，我一度感到迷失，某些段落读来颇为艰涩。但当我读到结尾并回溯开头时，才意识到所有情节都是精心设计的，那些元素——我们讨论过的雪、血、树木——在不断被重新利用和编排。

It's very unclear what's happening, who's alive, who's dead, who's gonna survive. And I found myself disoriented, and I found it in places hard going, I'll be honest. But when I got to the end and went back to the beginning, I began to see how everything was so deliberately planned, and that these elements were constantly being repurposed and rearranged. The elements we've talked about, the snow, the blood, the trees.

你也有同感吗？因为布局如此缜密，你会觉得自己被稳妥地引领着，虽然不知道去向何方，却愿意一路跟随。你有这种感觉吗？当时...

Did you feel that too? Because it's so meticulous, you feel like you're in good hands, and you're like, I don't know where we're going, but I'm along for the ride. Did you feel that? How did

你感觉如何？我...我在那些自然描写中有点迷失，这可能是我作为读者的短板。我更喜欢充满密集对话，人物频繁互动的那种书。

you feel? I I got a little a little lost in the nature description. That might be my own shortcoming as a reader. I I'm I'm into, like, heavy dialogue, a lot of, like, people interacting kind of books.

那和这本书的风格完全相反。

So the exact opposite of what this book is.

而且这甚至不像是一场堂吉诃德式的旅程，它并非真正关乎物理意义上的跋涉。当我们抵达时我如释重负，随后一切变得超现实而模糊——这是梦境吗？我们还活着吗？还是已死去？那只被埋葬的鸟又是谁的？

And and it's not even like, it's a quixotic journey, but it's not really about the physical journey. And I was relieved once we got there, and then it became this kind of surrealist, ambiguous, is this a dream? Are we alive? Are we dead? Who's is the bird buried?

那只鸟回来了吗？我确实为能读到这部分感到释然。MJ，你呢？你的核心感受是什么？

Is the bird back? It was I was relieved to to kinda get to that part. MJ, what about you? What were your top level thoughts?

这是我读的第一本香港著作，我十分喜爱。我也完全迷失在故事的超现实叙事中。但正如我之前提到的，你能在每一页都感受到精准与匠心，这是最打动我的地方。还有那些意象与隐喻的演变——随着阅读深入，它们会逐渐变形转化。

I so this was my first Hong Kong book that I'd read, and I loved it. I also just got very lost in what was happening and the surreal nature of it. But also, yeah, I I mentioned before, you could feel the precision and care on every single page, and that's what stood out right away to me. And then the images and the metaphors. And one of the things that I loved is how they morph as the book goes on.

起初你只看到雪、雪、树木和雪，仿佛随波逐流。部分雪景是岛上正在发生的暴风雪，但Kyung的噩梦视野里，雪象征着广州大屠杀的阴影，那本相关著作始终萦绕着她。所以你永远分不清所见是幻觉还是现实。

At first, you're just getting snow and snow and trees and snow, and you're, like, along for the ride. And part of the snow is this storm that's happening in the island, but Kyung has these nightmare visions of snow, which is the way that the Guangzhou massacre, and her book about that haunts her. And so you're never sure what's happening. Is it a hallucination or it's real?

对Insan的母亲亦是如此。当年Insan年幼时遭遇灭门惨案，她和妹妹去寻找尸体时，受害者遗体被积雪覆盖，她们不得不拂去积雪辨认身份。积雪是因为尸体冰冷未融化——这成为贯穿全书的意象。书中多处Hyun都在自问：我已死了吗？

And for Insan's mother as well, the snow, of course, when Insan was young and her family was massacred, she and her sister go to find their bodies. The bodies of the victims are covered with snow, and they have to wipe away the snow to see who is who. And the snow is because the bodies are cold, the snow is it hasn't melted. And this becomes a a motif that that recurs as well. There are points in the book where Hyun wonders, am I dead?

等等。雪花...等等...它在我脸上融化了。我还活着。

Wait. The snow wait. It's it's it's melting on my face. I'm still alive.

我突然想起开篇的重要氛围设定：Kyung在首尔酷热难耐的热浪中挣扎求生时，正深陷于'我该把遗嘱托付给谁'的痛苦泥沼。那种令人窒息的炎热，她根本无法承受。

I just remembered a major sort of atmosphere setting in the very beginning, which is that before as as Kyung has suffering through her life trying to figure out, like, who would I even burden with my will? She she's so mired in her in her pain. It's a intense heat wave in Seoul. Right? She cannot survive.

她的公寓热得像蒸笼，却连去有空调的公共场所的力气都提不起来。她就这样在家忍受着酷暑。

Her apartment is so hot, but she can't muster the strength to even go to a public location where there's air conditioning. She's sweltering in her home.

她做不到。她必须

She can't. She has to

不断冲冷水澡让自己清醒。这种酷热难耐、城市在热浪中融化的意象，与那个人迹罕至、荒凉刺骨、白雪皑皑的田园风光形成强烈对比——正是在那片纯净之地发生过如此骇人的历史。这种场景转换非常精妙，效果出奇地好。

keep taking cold showers to revive herself. And so this kind of this idea of the the sweltering heat, the melting city just crowded with so many bodies and then this this completely unpopulated, desolate, freezing cold, bucolic, pristine white landscape where this horrific history occurred. That that real shift was beautiful. That was that really worked.

你是否感觉到，这不仅仅是作者在描述事件，而是倾尽所有写作技巧来呈现这场历史清算？我实在太喜欢了。趁我们讨论整体感受时，我想分享几条读者留言——我们在线上读书社区发起了关于本书的讨论，题为《读书会推荐：香港的<我们不分离>》的书评文章后，全球读者都在热议。现在念几条给大家听听。

Did you get the sense that this is not just a writer just describing what's happening, but, like, she's really taking everything that she has in her tool belt and is using that to tell this historical reckoning. So I really loved it. And also, while we're talking about general thoughts, just wanted to share a few reader comments because we have been talking about this book online with our online community of readers. We have put up an article titled book club read We Do Not Part by Hong Kong with the book review, and readers from all over the world are talking about it. So I just wanna share a few comments.

波特兰的朱莉安娜说：'我彻底爱上了这位作家，那种想用整个灵魂拥抱她的热爱。她在这本书中的文字直击躯体、心灵与大脑，充满力量、震撼而非凡。'塔科马的金写道：'作为在韩国出生却长期生活在美国的人，阅读此书让我深受触动。我把阅读这些文字、聆听幸存者故事视为一种爱的行为。'

Juliana from Portland says, I fell in love with this author, the kind of love you just wanna hug her with your whole soul. Her writing in this book was body gripping, heart gripping, and mind gripping. It was powerful, jarring, and extraordinary. Jin from Tacoma says, as someone born in Korea, but who lived most of my life in The States, it was so powerful to read this book. I see my reading of these books and in listening to the stories of the survivors as an act of love.

还有一条我特别钟爱的诗意留言，来自网名'螺旋晨曦'的读者（希望我没念错）：'刚读完这本书。当失去之痛沉重到难以承受时，我不得不数次掩卷。我感受到累累白骨的重量，无数被困灵魂的重量。这本书永远无法真正合上——'

And one comment that I especially just really loved, it's so poetic, it's from someone who goes by, I believe, I hope I'm saying it right, Helicala Sunrise. And they wrote, I just finished the book. I had to stop and put it down a few times when the depth of the losses became too much to continue on. I felt the weight of many bones, the weight of many trapped souls. There's no closing this book.

它永远不会终结。说得太好了，感谢

It does not close. Couldn't have said it better, so thank you for

读得最过瘾。读者提出了一个重要观点，因为当你读到书的结尾时，那并非真正的结局，对吧？我立刻又翻回开头重读，我敢打赌其他人也会这么做。

reading the best. An important point that reader makes because when you get to the end of the book, it's not really an ending, is it? I went right back to the beginning, and, I bet he I bet other people did too.

说得好，我想转向谈谈第二部分。我们讨论第一部分够多了，现在聊聊第二部分吧。不过首先，我觉得该短暂休息下。

That's a good point, and I want to pivot to talk about part two. We've been talking about part one a lot, but I wanna talk about part two. But first, I think we should take a quick break.

嘿，等等。这是属于你的时刻。是你此生今日的这一分钟，是你挥洒创意的日子。

Hey. Hold up. This is your minute. It's your minute in this life on this day. It's your day to play.

去玩耍、去创造、去行动、去穿越、去探索。这是你分享的清晨，你塑造的周末，去烹饪、去沉浸、去聆听、去等待。这是你休憩的身体，滋养它，让它成长。这是你的心智，明白吗？

To play, to make, to move, to move through, to explore. It's your morning to share, your weekend to shape, to cook, to soak, to listen to, to wait. It's your body to rest, to nourish, to grow. It's your mind. You know?

这是你的家园，你的国度，你值得热爱的生活，去崛起、去梦想、去改变。这世界属于你，如同属于任何人。这是待你理解的世界。《纽约时报》。更多内容请访问nytimes.com/yourworld。

It's your place, your country, your life to love, to rise, to dream, to change. It's your world as much as anyone's. It's your world to understand. The New York Times. Find out more at nytimes.com/yourworld.

我们回来了。我是MJ·富兰克林，正与艾米丽·艾肯和劳伦·克里斯滕森畅谈黄碧云的小说《我们不离》。休息前我们讨论了小说前半部，现在转向后半部分。

And we're back. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm chatting with Emily Aiken and Lauren Christensen, and we're talking about We Do Not Part by Hong Kong. Before the break, we talked about the first half of the novel. Now we're gonna pivot to the second half.

劳伦，能否请你为我们介绍下后半部的剧情框架？

And I was wondering, Lauren, can you give us a setup of the second half?

当然。不过，我不确定在情节方面有多少内容可以真正确定。第一部分，正如艾米莉提到的，仁孙召唤了庆雅去救她的宠物鸟，那只鸟在没有食物和水的情况下只能存活几天。于是她踏上了这段充满幻想的旅程，包括乘飞机、坐巴士等各种交通工具。而第二部分，第一部分名为《鸟》。

Sure. Although, I'm not sure how much there is to actually pin down in terms of plot. So the first part, Inson has summoned Kyunga, as Emily mentioned, to rescue her pet bird who can only survive for a couple of days without food and water. And so she takes this quixotic journey that involves a plane, a bus, everything. And and by the second part the first part was called bird.

第二部分名为《夜》。当夜幕降临，就在你以为她即将体力崩溃的那一刻，你知道，她在冰冷的雪地里忍受着偏头痛。她没有进食，虚弱不堪。突然，像海市蜃楼一样，她看到了恩森的木工工作室。

The second part is called night. And by the time night falls, by the time she as soon as she's at the moment you think she's going to physically crumble, you know, she's having migraines in the freezing cold snow. She's has not eaten. She's completely weak. And suddenly, like a mirage, she sees Ensign's carpentry studio.

门大开着，仿佛欢迎她进入这个灯火通明的洞穴般空间。她在那里找到了那只名叫阿玛的鸟，不幸的是，鸟已经死了。所以她到达后的第一个目标就是：我该如何埋葬这只鸟？于是她极其小心地用多种材料包裹这只鸟，有一块布，

The door is gaping open as if welcoming her into its sort of its lit cavern. And she she finds there the bird whose name is Ama, and the bird has unfortunately died. So the her first goal upon arriving is how do I bury this bird? So she's wrapping this bird with so much care in in several different materials. There's a there's a cloth.

还有一个金属笼子，用来盛放鸟的遗体。她必须找到足够松软的土壤来挖掘，因为暴风雪中一切都冻结了，最终她成功了。然后突然间——这里剧情急转直下——她发现鸟还活着。鸟儿要么像胡迪尼一样从她层层包裹中逃脱并破土而出，要么鸟根本就没死，她也从未埋葬过它。

There's a metal sort of cage that that that is is holding these remains of the bird. And and she has to work to find soil soft enough to be able to dig because it's a snowstorm and everything's frozen, and she finally does. And then somehow and this is where everything the rug is pulled out from under you. She looks and the bird's alive. The bird is is out.

与此同时，正如我们所说，她正遭受剧烈的偏头痛折磨。所以她甚至不确定是否能相信自己的视觉。

The bird has either escaped Houdini like her multiple layers of of wrapping and emerged from the ground, or the bird was never dead and she never buried the bird. And then she's she's experiencing almost like you know? And meanwhile, as we've said, she's suffering from intense migraines. So so she's not sure she can trust her own vision either.

然后在旅途中，她倒在雪地里，昏了过去。

And then on the journey, she, like, falls in the snow. She passes out.

她苏醒过来。没错，一切都如梦似幻。但在其中一个幻象中，她感觉自己看到的人正是仁孙——我们以为这位手指受伤的朋友应该在首尔的医院里，可她的手指完好无损。所以我们完全搞不清状况。她甚至自问：我是不是已经死了？

She comes to Exactly. Everything is dreamlike. But in one of those visions, what she feels she experiences she's seeing is none other than Insan, her friend who is we thought was in a hospital in Seoul with her fingers, and her fingers are intact. So we don't know what the hell is happening. She's even she says, am I dead?

比如，我指的是那个已经不在人世的人？你明白吗，发生了什么？而后半部分则是这两位看似活着的女性之间冗长的对话，她们共同进行着一场深刻而私密的回忆仪式。

Like, I the one who's not alive anymore? You know, what's happening? And and the rest the second half is this protracted dialogue conversation between these two women who seem to be alive, and they are engaging in this intense and intimate act of remembering together.

我最后一个铺垫性问题是：她们在谈论什么？她们在回忆什么？

And my last setup question is, what are they talking about? What are they remembering?

她们回忆的内容——其实主要是单方面对话。仁珊正在向庆雅讲述她母亲临终前的嘱托。这本书的独特之处在于，我们不仅分不清记忆与现实的界限，文本中甚至没有引号标识。需要反复推敲分析才能理清：谁在说话、哪些是内心活动、哪些是真实对话、哪些又是档案材料。

They're remembering well, it's it's mostly it's one-sided dialogue. Insan is is really narrating to Kyung Ah what her mother imparted to her before she died. This is one of those books, not only do we not know what's a memory, what's in the present, there's no die there's no quotation marks. We it it takes some investigating, some analysis to figure out who's saying what, what's a thought, what's being spoken out loud, what's the actual archival material.

这种处理显然是有意为之。使得生死之间、人鬼之间、甚至自然与人类之间的界限都变得模糊不清。嗯。

And that seems very deliberate. So that the boundaries between life and death, who's alive, who's not, between people, and even between nature and animals and human beings seem so porous. Mhmm.

那么我想抛给各位的开放式问题是：你们如何理解第二部分？非常诡异。到底发生了什么？我们无从得知。我注意到第二部分采用了截然不同的叙事风格。

So then my question open question for the table is, what did you make of it? Part two, very weird. What's going on? We don't know. One of the things I noticed is there's a different register in part two.

前半段是危机四伏的旅程，属于旅行叙事——我们要穿越这场风暴，堪称现代奥德赛。而第二部分却充满恐怖片质感。

The first part is is this treacherous journey. It's this travel narrative. We're gonna get through this storm. It's this odyssey. The second part, though, has, I felt, a horror movie energy.

频繁出现突发惊吓：她望向窗外看见一棵树，却不确定那是否尸体，直到确认'哦是棵树'；转头又惊觉'那黑影是什么？'

There are so many jump scares that happen. She looks out the window and sees this tree, and she isn't sure if it's a body or what it is. And she's like, oh, it's a tree. Yeah. Or then she, like, looks over, and she's like, what is that figure?

那是影子吗？不，是香火的幻影。而且，这里有更多突然的惊吓。整个基调都变了。

Is it a shadow? No. It's the apparition of incense. Like, there there are way more jump scares. The register has changed.

我不知道该如何理解这一点，但我注意到了。感觉非常刻意。不过我很好奇，在第二部分中，你对这个情节有什么感受？

And I don't know what to make of that, but I'd I'd noted it. It felt so intentional. But I'm curious in part two, how did you how did you feel about it?

我在许多段落中将其解读为庆又一次在召唤——不是梦境，而是召唤这种场景。实际上，你是否回到你那幅具有历史意义的画作上？那几乎完全存在于她的脑海中。仁善不可能在那里。要么就是她在医院里幻听到朋友呼唤她，但这似乎更不可能。这确实让人觉得她构建了整个设定——我以为那个项目已经终止了。

I interpreted it in a lot of a lot of the passages made me feel that this was another instance where Kyung was summoning, not a dream, but summoning this kind of tableau. Actually, do you go back to your painting this of of historical significance that is almost entirely in her mind? It's not possible that Insan is there. Either that or she's hallucinated her friend calling her in the hospital, but that that seems more unlikely. It it does feel like she's has this whole setup of I thought the project was off.

我以为那部纪录片《我们不离不弃》已经搁浅了，我们放弃了那个项目。但不知怎么，仁善一直在暗中推进它。这感觉像是个幻想，像是她脑海中的计划。此外还有一点让我觉得特别有深意却最终没有答案——就是两位女性之间那种奇特的、模棱两可的关系。

I thought the documentary the film, we do not part, was nil. We were we abandoned that project, and somehow, Instant's been working on it this whole time. That feels like a fantasy. It feels like this project in her mind. And then there's also this really something I found so rewarding and ultimately no answers, but was just this strange ambiguous relationship between the two women also.

我们关系亲近，但也没那么亲近。懂吗？庆雅像是说：'我甚至不会用遗嘱去麻烦仁善，我根本不是那种人。为什么在所有人中偏偏要找我？我基本上只是她的同事。我都不知道我们关系有这么近。'

Like, we're close, but not that close. You know? Kyung Ah is like, I am not the person I wouldn't have even burdened Inson with my will. Why is she calling on me, of all people, to like, I'm basically her colleague. Like, I didn't realize we were that close.

但到了第二部分，她们之间似乎存在着某种共生关系，几乎像是她在幻想这种无言的亲密——她们无需言语就能知道对方在想什么。

But then there's just this sort of symbiosis between them and just this by the time we're in the second part, it's almost like she's hallucinating this unspoken intimacy between them where they they know what each other is thinking without having to

说出口。我们了解到许多有趣的事，这些铺垫解释了为什么她们之间存在超越个体生命、甚至延续至死后的羁绊。我们知道仁善作为纪录片导演，拍摄过三部重要作品，全都关于女性——值得一提的是，这本书里除公交车司机外全是女性角色。那些影片讲述的都是从暴行中幸存下来的女性故事。

say it. And we learned so many a few interesting things that prepare us for why they would have this bond that would transcend their individual lives and and go beyond even in death. We know that In Sun is as a documentary filmmaker made, I think, three films that were notable, and they were all about women. We should talk about the fact that this book is all women except for the bus driver. And those films were really about women who survived atrocities.

而最后一部电影《阳光》将镜头转向了自身。在暴风雪中，当Kyun艰难跋涉前往In Sun家时，她回忆这些电影，仿佛在脑海中放映。我认为这也为她们到达房子时的情境做了铺垫——无论她们都是幻影，还是一人存活一人已逝，她们以一种特殊方式共享着这段历史。不知道你们怎么想，但我觉得这部小说乃至洪尚秀作品中，女性总能触及历史、痛苦与创伤。

And the last film, In Sun turns the camera on herself. And and during the snowstorm, as Kyun is trekking through the blizzard to In Sun's house, she recalls these films as if she's almost playing them in her mind. And I think that also sets us up for when we get to the house, whether they're both phantoms, one is alive, one is dead, that this is like they have this they have access to this history in a way that I think I don't know what you guys thought, but I felt like women in her in this novel and in Hong Kong's work in general have access to history and pain and trauma.

所有男人都被围捕并铲除了。确实如此对吧？书里出现过男性角色，但他们都以被谋杀的形式被记住——说得好。

Well, the men were all rounded up and shod. True. Right? There are men in this book, but they are remembered as Good point. As murdered.

因此挖掘真相就成了女性的义务与责任，是她们必须承担的宿命与重负。

And so it is the women's duty, responsibility. It is their their lot to their burden to dredge up what happened.

我能说说对后半部分的不同解读吗？我要先讲阅读时的想法——但事先声明，结局再次推翻了我所有推测。我原以为她成功抵达房子，且不认为那是幻觉。某种程度上，我觉得In可能是真实存在的灵体，不完全是鬼魂，也不纯属Kyun He的幻想，更像是In sun自身的投射。因为In sun曾讲述童年逃跑住院濒死时，她的幽灵曾在家中显现在母亲面前。

Can I tell you I had a slightly different interpretation of the second half? I'm gonna say what I thought as I was reading the second half, and then disclosure, like, the ending made me change all of my thoughts once again. But I thought that she made it to the house, and I I didn't think that she was hallucinating. Somehow, I felt like the In could actually be there as an apparition, not necessarily as like, as a ghost, not necessarily as a hallucination from Kyung He's mind, but, like, a projection from In sun herself. And that is because Insan tells this story at one point that when she ran away as a kid and she was in the hospital and she was, like, close to death, her ghost appeared to her mother in the house.

所以我们有先例可循——存在着另一种形态的In sun，某种可显现的化身。我认为这就是Kyun全程面对的存在。当然第三部分再次颠覆了我的认知，但当时我的判断是：Kyun hye还活着，勉强活着。

And so we have some type of precedent for that idea that, like, there is another type of insom. There's another form that can appear. So I thought that that is what Kyung was facing throughout. And then again, my feelings about whatever happened and what we were actually reading changed again in part three. But for me, I was like, Kyung hye's alive, barely.

In sun还活着，而她的幽灵因承受着巨大压力及彼此倾诉的历史重负而显形。

In sun is alive, and her ghost is here because of the weight of what In sun's going through and because of the weight of the history that they are telling each other.

刚想起来有个细节忘了在第二部分概述里提到——Kyun ga痊愈了。她开始好转，症状消失，突然产生了久违的饥饿感。

Something I just remembered, I I forgot to mention in the in my little summary of what happens in the second part. Kyunga is cured. She starts to feel better. Her symptoms go away. She suddenly has this hunger she hasn't felt.

自从我们认识她以来，突然间，那个瞬间出现的幽灵般的存在开始为她煮粥，而她竟然吃了起来，还渴望继续吃。这是一种近乎神秘的治愈过程。当你提到已经遗忘那段记忆时，仿佛仁顺确实拥有某种神性存在感，带着近乎滑稽的召唤方式——比如让她在暴风雪中执行给鸟喂水这种荒谬任务，整件事就像某种神圣使命。

And since we've known her, all of a sudden, the instant ghost, whatever, is is making her porridge, and she's eating it. And she's wanting to eat it. And and it's this mystical sort of healing that happens. And and when you said just I I have forgotten about that that memory, and it's almost as if Inson is this she she really does have this kind of godlike presence, this sort of almost comical summoning, like sending her on this sort of silly goose chase of, like, go find go give my bird water in a snowstorm. It feels like this kind of mission.

你正在受苦。你深陷于自己狭隘的生存状态中，要么是你隔绝了整个世界，要么是世界抛弃了你。无论如何，你完全孤立无援。让我来拯救你吧。

You're suffering. You are so mired in your kind of myopic existence where you have shut out the whole world or the world has shut you out. Either way, you're totally isolated. Let me let me save you.

就这本书的隐喻而言，你必须感受痛苦。你必须完成使命。你必须继续前行。我知道我们这次谈话已经超时了，接下来还有精彩的第三部分。但我想谈谈这部小说的历史课题，我认为这至关重要。

Which for the metaphor of the book, you have to feel the pain. You have to go through the mission. You have to move on. I know we're running long in this conversation, and we have a exciting third segment. But I wanna talk about the historical project of this novel because I think that's so important.

我推荐听众们也去看看洪晓蕾在2024年获得诺奖后的演讲。她在演讲中详细阐述了自己所有作品背后的思考。她说了个非常有趣的观点：认为仁顺的母亲才是这本书真正的主角。我很好奇，谁能给我们讲讲她母亲的事？以及你们对'记忆的重量'这个主题的理解？

And one of the things that I recommend listeners go also check out is Hong Kong's Nobel lecture after she won the prize in 2024. Because in it, she gives a lot of background of what she's thinking about across all of her books. And she said something so interesting, which is that she considers In Sun's mother to be the true protagonist of this book. And I'm curious, can someone tell us a little bit about her mother and and what you made of the weight of remembering?

这个观点很有意思。我们最初了解到的母亲是个已逝之人，死于痴呆症，生前由仁顺照料。直到小说结尾，她才逐渐显现为能够讲述历史的人物，承载着所有创伤记忆。虽然仁顺和奎恩在济州岛的房子里相处，但母亲始终存在——我们甚至能听见她的声音，看见她铅笔留下的痕迹。本质上我们身处她母亲建造的博物馆里，这里保存着她家族遭遇的大屠杀历史，而她毕生都在竭力传承这段被掩埋的记忆。

That's a really interesting idea because we don't we we first know about the mother as someone who has died, who died as a person with dementia, who Insan was caring for. And so only later, only she emerges as a kind of person who can recount a history and who has all this history, this trauma, only at the end of the book. But where all points are pulling us toward the mother, which is so interesting. So even as In Sun and Kyun are together in the house in Jeju, the mother is there. We actually hear her voice, and we see the literally the traces of her pencil marks as In sun we're basically in a museum that her mother has assembled that contains in it the history of the massacre that she that her that killed her family, and that she became responsible for passing on and preserving the history of to the degree that she could.

我们了解到关于她的非凡事迹：这场屠杀被官方历史掩盖，多年后才由民间团体组织挖掘矿洞里的万人坑。

We learned all these extraordinary things about her. So this massacre was suppressed by official history, and only years and years later was a group formed, a community group, to go excavate the mass grave where bodies were in a mine.

而仁顺的母亲正是背后的推动力量。她参与每场纪念活动，每次挖掘工作。她不仅收集历史，更真正肩负起寻找遇难者遗骸的责任。

And Ensign's mother was, like, the force behind it. She was at every event. She was at every, like, excavation. And it's not that she's just collected this history, but she's really taken charge of trying to find the bodies of the people that they lost.

包括他们的兄弟。

Including their brother.

包括他们的兄弟。对我来说，这本书的前半部分氛围感极强。但当全书脉络突然清晰的那一刻，是当你发现关于她母亲的真相，以及记忆的重要性——我们必须记住。而对我而言，核心问题是：当历史被压制时，我们该如何记忆？你为何要记住？

Including their brother. And for me, that like, so the first half of the book is so atmospheric. But when this book totally clicked into place is when you find out about her mother and just the importance of remembering, that we have to remember. And for me, the animated question is, how do we remember when history is suppressed? Why do you remember?

我们如何告慰逝者？这似乎是自古以来无数文学作品探索的主题，但香港作家以如此独特而令人难忘的方式呈现了它。

How do we honor our dead? And that felt like something that is explored time immemorial throughout so many types of books, throughout the ages, and yet Hong Kong does it in such a original, haunting way.

是的。我能理解她是这部小说的核心人物——书中所有事件都因她而起。她的女儿甚至切下手指作为祭品。是祭奠，还是为了重新撕开伤口，宣泄丧母之痛？这种母性关系的描绘中蕴含着惊人的美感。

Yeah. I I can see that she's the protagonist in the sense that everything in this novel happens because of her. The her daughter quite literally cuts off her finger as a tribute. A tribute or or just a way to reopen the wound and out of her grief over her mother's passing. There's so much beauty in this in in that depiction of their motherhood.

有个画面深深烙在我记忆里：当仁善照顾母亲时，母亲有时认不出她，可能把她当成妹妹或姐姐，但剥橘子时总会下意识掰开，把更大的那半给女儿。在她灵魂最深处，始终记得这是她的孩子。书中充满这类细腻瞬间，韩江没有过度渲染，而是将真实人性精巧地编织进文本。

It's just seared in my memory that as Insan is caring for her mother, and her mother is sometimes forgot not doesn't recognize Insan, maybe sometimes thinks she's the baby sister or an older sister or just just doesn't recognize her as as her daughter, she still has this muscle memory, this instinct of whenever she peels a mandarin, she instinctively breaks it and shares it and gives the bigger piece to her daughter. That somewhere in her just the deepest recesses of her soul, she remembers that this is her child. And that is just there's there's lots of moments like that that are so small, and and Han does not belabor them. She does not shove them in your face. It is so delicately woven into this book, the real humanity.

更不用说两位女性梳理档案的过程。记不清是以谁的视角，但临近结尾时，仁善或庆雅说：在翻阅这些文件时，我们不得不重新定义对人类行为的认知——那些超出想象的恐怖迫使你彻底重构世界观，不仅关于个人命运，更是对整个人类物种的认知。这简直难以置信。

Not to mention just the fact of these two women going through this archive. And I think one of I can't remember actually which whose perspective we're in, but either Insan or Kyunga toward the end just says, I going through all of these documents, just pouring over the scale of the horror that happened. And one of the women or maybe both of them are just like, we had to reframe what we thought was possible, what what we thought it was possible for one human being to do to another. You you just completely reorient your entire conception, not of your own life, but just about humankind. It's it's unthinkable.

因此这本书同时在两个极端尺度上运作：既极度私密，又无比宏大。

And so this book is really working on two extremely opposite scales, an incredibly intimate and and really wide ranging.

回到你关于主角是母亲的观点，她教导或邀请我们不要忘记这段历史，并真正体现和激活它。我再次想到那个关键情节。这本书的结构确实如建筑般精妙，像一座大厦。仁善回忆她十几岁时离家出走的那一集，我们知道这个情节为奇幻元素埋下伏笔——她以幽灵形态出现在忧心忡忡的母亲面前，这为结局做了铺垫。但她离家出走的原因是她对母亲极度愤怒。

And going back to your point about the protagonist being the mother and teaching us or inviting us not to forget, not to forget this history and really embodying it and embodying it and animating it. I'm thinking again of that episode, that key episode. Again, this this book is really brilliantly structured like a like a work of architecture, like a like an edifice. The episode where In Sun has In Sun's recounting how as a teenager she ran away, and we know that that's an episode that prepares us for this idea of the fantastic because she appears before her mother who's worried sick about her in Jeju as a phantom, and that prepares us for the end. But the reason she's run away is because she is very, very angry with her mother.

太恶心了。她就是恨

Disgusting. She just she hates

她的母亲。她对母亲怒不可遏。我觉得这里值得探讨，因为这似乎是一种选择——逃离这段过去、逃离这段历史是否可行？事实证明并非如此。

her mother. She's furious with her mother. And and I feel like there's something we can explore there because it's like, that is an option. Is it an option running away from this past, running away from this history? It turns out it's not.

但整件事本身就是个隐喻。对吧？母亲没有与女儿分享这段历史，女儿因不理解她的沉默而愤怒。这又回到了那个观点：你必须感受这种痛苦，否则心灵就会腐朽。

But even that as a whole thing is a metaphor. Right? Her mother didn't share this history with her daughter. And then her daughter is furious with her and doesn't understand her silence. And that ties back to the idea of you have to feel this pain because otherwise you will rot.

这正是母女关系遭遇的困境。当女儿了解这段历史后，她得以重新拥抱母亲的记忆，同时也找回了那段被遗忘的历史。我觉得这本看似单薄的书蕴含了太多层次，我们本可以讨论一整天，但时间有限。结束前，你们还有什么最想强调的观点吗？

That's what's happened to the relationship. And then she finds out about this history, and they're able she's able to reclaim her mother's memory and then also the memory of of what's happened. I I feel like there's so much folded into this, again, pretty slim book, and it's operating on so many levels. I feel like we could talk about it all day, but we're running out of time. So before we go, are there just any top level last things you wanna say?

关于这本书最希望读者了解的内容。

Things you want people to know about this book.

最震撼我的是，我在韩江的专访中读到，她本人确实做过小说开篇描述的那个梦——她围绕这个梦境构建了整个故事。而且她本人写过关于光州屠杀的小说（虽然我们没讨论那本）。这不是说本书是自传体小说，但能感受到她是在探索而非虚构这些历史联结，正因如此才如此有力——作品与现实历史有着深刻共鸣。

One thing that really struck me, I think I read in a profile of Hong Kong that she herself has had the dream with which she begins the book, which I think is really interesting that she created this novel around this dream, and that she herself has written about the massacre at Kwonju. We didn't talk about that novel really, but this I don't I'm not saying this is a work of auto fiction, but I think that she is exploring these connections rather than inventing them as as the artifice of fiction, and you feel that. That's why I think it really works. There's a powerful connection to actual history.

我读这本书之前已经看过《素食者》，原本期待会看到非常直白的内容。我一直在说，这本书并没有把一切强加给你。《素食者》非常直白地展现其意图，在积极意义上没有给不同情感体验留下太多空间。它基本只提供一种极其强烈的情感体验，非常有冲击力。而这本书展现了韩江与读者之间完全不同的关系。

I came into this having read The Vegetarian, and I think I was expecting something really in my face. I I think I I keep saying, and this she doesn't throw it in your face. I think the vegetarian is very upfront about what it's doing, and it doesn't really leave so much room in in a positive way for different affective experiences. Like, it it's pretty much giving you one really intense affective experience, and it's very powerful. This was a whole different relationship that I think Han was having with her reader.

无论是情节、结构还是时间线，这本书都极具开放性解读空间。情感冲击力极强，但正如我所说，它真的允许各种解读。我认为小说家在叙事策略上的这两种手法——既保持高度控制又开放解读——令人印象深刻。是的，我们讨论过每个章节都是多么精心设计的。

It is extremely open to interpretation in terms of plot, structure, timeline. I think the emotion is extremely powerful, but it's it's it's really open to interpretation is what I'm saying. And I think that it's so impressive for both of those strategies on a narrator's part, on a on a novelist's part, to be equally controlled. Yes. And we've made so much of how intentional and deliberate every section is.

她确实是位具有惊人创作幅度的作家。

She it's it's just she is a a writer of intense range.

是的。谈到《人类的行为》（关于光州事件的书）和《素食者》时这是个很好的观点，因为我们接下来要讨论的是：你会推荐哪些书与《我们不离不弃》搭配阅读？我把范围放得很宽——可以是氛围相似的书、同样探讨历史的书，或是读完这本后你需要用来平复心情的书。范围很广，但我想知道，你会建议读者读完《我们不离不弃》后接着读什么？

Yeah. That is a great point talking about Human Acts, which is the book about the Guangzhou Massacre and The Vegetarian because our next segment is, are there other books that you would pair with We Do Not Part? I'm leaving this so broad a remit. This could be books that have a similar atmosphere, books that also reckon with history, books that you just felt like you needed to read to for comfort after you read this one. I'm giving it so broad, but I'm just wondering, are there books that you would recommend readers pick up next after reading We Do Not Part?

我要推荐一本几天前刚出版的书，也是翻译小说，瑞典作家安妮卡·诺林的《殖民地》。这个故事几乎完全发生在人迹罕至的森林荒野中。

So I am going to recommend a book that came out a few days ago, actually. It's called it's another novel in translation. This is a Swedish novel. It is called The Colony by Annika Norlin. This is another story that takes place almost entirely in the woods in this kind of unpopulated remote naturescape.

我想重点说其中一个方面。整体是关于一群格格不入的人在瑞典森林里组建公社的故事。特别要提一个叫约瑟夫的匈牙利孤儿，他的故事让我强烈联想到殷熙的故事——虽然这种设定不算独特，但这个联系对我触动很深。约瑟夫的父母是奥斯维辛集中营的幸存者，却从未向他提及往事。

I'm gonna focus on one aspect of it. It is overall about a colony of kind of incongruous individuals that that decide to form a commune together in in the woods in in the Swedish forest. I wanna specifically focus on one character, this Hungarian orphaned Hungarian man named Joseph, whose story reminds me so much Incin's story reminded me so much of Joseph's in that and and it's not totally unique to these characters, but it was a very powerful connection to me. Joseph's parents were survivors of, I believe it was Auschwitz, one of the concentration camps. They never spoke to him about it.

他长大后，父母幸存并移民瑞典。他只能在学校了解大屠杀历史，心想：这大概就是我父母的经历吧。

He grew up. They they survived. They immigrated to Sweden. And he grew up having to learn about the Holocaust in his school. And he was like, I think that might be what my parents went through.

而且而且而且，这真的就是，他的父母痴迷于让他开心、让他正常，去这个游泳池游泳，加入游泳队，交朋友，玩耍，做个正常人。而这种压抑的沉默和强颜欢笑几乎贯穿了他的整个童年。他变成了一个如此悲伤、忧郁的男孩，一个孤独的男孩。他很受欢迎。你知道的，他很正常。

And and and it's just this really and and his parents are obsessed with him having fun and being normal and going to this pool and swimming and being on the swim team and just having friends and playing and being normal. And and it's almost this oppressive silence and forced smile that is it just pervades his childhood. And he becomes such a sad, melancholic boy, a lonely boy. He's well liked. You know, he's normal.

但他内心感到一种彻底的连接缺失。对我来说，这恰恰反映了父母对一段历史和经历的沉默，却以一种极其强烈的方式对孩子诉说着。这真的让我想起了很多。然后我想我的另一个推荐是，这本书即将在下周出版，我相信。我觉得就在唱片划痕般的第二部分，你会有点像是，等一下。

But he inside feels this complete absence of connection. And it just to me, just this this the parents' silence about a history and an experience that just speaks to the child nevertheless in this incredibly powerful way. It really it reminded me so much of that. And then I guess my other recommendation, this is a book that is going to come out, I believe, next week. I I think it was just the record scratch second section where you're kinda like, wait a minute.

一切都颠倒了。如果你真的喜欢那样，我们在哪里？在这本书中，凯蒂·北村，她之前的小说《亲密关系》曾入选我们年度十大好书榜单。

Everything's upside down. Where are we if you really like that? In this book, Katie Kitamura, whose previous novel Intimacies was on our 10 best books of the year list.

我想那是2022年。

I think that's 2022.

是的。谢谢。我我没打算

Yeah. Thank you. I I wasn't gonna

2021年？

2021?

我一时想不起来了。

Top of my head.

二零二零年代是哪一年。

What year twenty twenties.

最近几年。是的。那是疫情期间。嗯，她的下一部小说叫《试镜》，除了书中途突然发生转折让你完全摸不着头脑这一点外，它与本书截然不同。而且是以一种令人极度满足、富有成效又彻底迷失方向的方式呈现的。

Recently in the past few years. Yes. It was pandemic. Well, her next novel is called Audition, and it is a completely different novel from this except for the fact that something switches smack in the middle of the book, and you just don't know up from down. And in a really satisfying, productive, totally disorienting way.

所以如果你恰好喜欢这本书的这个部分，我推荐凯蒂·北村的即将出版的《试镜》。

So if you happen to like that part of this book, I recommend Katie Kitamura's forthcoming audition.

我超爱这些推荐，而且两本都这么新，这么近期。我都觉得这像是新闻报纸和新闻播客了。你呢，艾米丽？你有什么推荐？

I love those recommendations, and both so new, so recent. I was like, this is a news paper and news podcast. What about you, Emily? What would you recommend?

我要推荐一本较老的小说。虽然我认为虹影的文风极其独特，很难找到可比之作——但这本小说在主题上与《我们不离不弃》有某种共鸣，那就是加拿大-斯里兰卡作家迈克尔·翁达杰的《英国病人》。这本书出版于1992年，我认为它被电影版的光芒掩盖了，虽然电影本身非常出色。但原著讲述的是二战废墟中的故事，主角包括标题所指的英国病人——一个没有名字的烧伤患者。

I'm gonna recommend an older novel. And though I I think Hong Kong's voice is so utterly distinct, it's hard it's this is not a novel that I can compare to hers. But I think like Lauren, there's something in the themes that is evocative of of we do not part, and that is The English Patient by the Canadian Sri Lankan writer, Michael Andace. This book is was published in 1992, and I think it's been overshadowed by the movie version, which is actually phenomenal. But the book itself is a is a is a story that takes place in the ruins of another conflict, World War two, and features a cast of characters, including the English patient of the title, who is a nameless burn victim.

他被烧得面目全非，没有任何身份证明。没人知道他是谁。随着他回忆往事，照顾他的护士以及这个小群体中的人们也逐渐揭露自己的故事——他濒临死亡，但这些至少暂时从可怕战争中幸存下来的人，其故事之美让我想起...这是本极致美丽的书。我记得安东尼·莱恩当时写过书评。

He's so burned, and he has no identity cards. Nobody knows who he is. And he recounts his past as do does the nurse who attends to him and this small collection of people who are he's dying, but survivors at least for the moment of this terrible conflict reminds me in its beauty. It's an utterly beautiful book. I think Anthony Lane, I remember, reviewed it at the time.

也许他评的是电影改编版，他说这本书美得几乎让人不忍卒读。真是本华丽至极的作品。

Maybe he reviewed the movie adaptation, and he said it's almost too painfully beautiful to read. It's a gorgeous book.

这听起来同样令人难以置信。读者们，快去看看吧。我有两本书推荐，第一本是《香港的人类行为》，我认为它是《我们不分离》的姊妹篇。《我们不分离》探讨的是我们如何记忆，而《人类行为》则聚焦于我们能否记忆。

That sounds also incredible. Go check it out, readers. So I have two, which is, first, go read Hong Kong's Human Acts, which I think is a cousin novel to We Do Not Part. We Do Not Part is about, like, how do we remember? Human Acts is about how can we remember.

这本书关于广州大屠杀，悲剧如此骇人，幸存者们纷纷表示不愿回忆。‘我无法承受这样的生活’，有人说，‘我不想谈论接下来发生的事。再没有人有权要求我记住。’这是我读过最令人心碎的书之一，但我很庆幸读了它。

This that's about the Guangzhou massacre, and the tragedy is so horrible that the people, the survivors are like, we don't wanna remember. I can't live this. And someone says, I don't wanna talk about what happened next. There is no one who has the right to ask me to remember anymore. That book is one of the most upsetting things I've ever read, and I'm so happy I read it.

它给我的感觉是部重要的作品，野心勃勃。在形式上也有所创新，通过多角色切换和时间跳跃来叙事。就像这本书一样，直视它是痛苦的，但你必须这么做。

It's I it feels like an important book. It's an ambitious book. It also plays with form. You're jumping around a bunch of different characters and it's playing with time. But it's one of those things where, similar to this book, it's painful to look at, but you have to.

这就是那种不得不读的书。另一本推荐是，即将到来的四月是‘国家诗歌月’，所以我推荐丹妮丝·史密斯的诗集《别称我们已死》。这部作品深刻探讨了美国无数手无寸铁的无辜黑人男孩被追捕杀害的事件，名单长得没有尽头。

That's one of those books. And then my other book is April coming up is National Poetry Month. So I have a poetry recommendation, and that is Don't Call Us Dead by Dinesse Smith. This book is really wrestling with a number of unarmed innocent black boys who have been hunted down and killed in The US. The list goes on and on and on.

整部诗集都在与这种沉重抗争。核心诗作是长达20页的史诗《夏日某处》，书名正来源于此。诗中写道：‘别称我们已死，称我们在更好的地方活着。’为突出相似性，我想朗读其中几句。

And the the the this poem and or I guess this whole collection is wrestling with that weight. And the the central poem, it's this 20 page epic, is called summer somewhere, and that's where the title comes from. It says, don't call us dead. Call us alive someplace better. And to point out the the similarities, I just wanna read some quotes from it.

其中一句是：‘历史就是历史，它清楚自己的所作所为。’读《我们不分离》时，我也有同感。另一段写道：‘亲爱的，我最遥远的爱，当我梦见你，醒来时置身蓝色田野，我沉溺其中。若你在，我们本可终日扮演伊甸园，但此处的果实生长诡异。’

One of them is just history is what it is. It knows what it did. And I feel like that is a thing that I felt while reading We Do Not Part. And then there's another section on the page that says, dear, dear, my most distant love, when I dream of you, I wake in a field so blue I drown. If you were here, we could play Eden all day, but fruit here grows strange.

‘我知晓前方潜伏着险恶。’这也与本书的精神内核相通。丹妮丝是位杰出的诗人，去读读她所有的作品吧，但我特别建议将《别称我们已死》与《我们不分离》对照阅读。

I know before me live something treacherous. That also is the same ethos I think of this book. And Dines is a remarkable poet. Go check out all of their work, but specifically, I would pair Don't Call Us Dead with We Do Not Part.

太美了。绝佳的选择。

Gorgeous. Wonderful choice.

遗憾的是，我想我们今天的时间就到这里了。艾米丽、劳伦，虽然讨论的话题很沉重，但和你们一起真的很愉快，这么说可能有点奇怪，不过非常感谢你们。

I, unfortunately, think that's all the time we have today. Emily, Lauren, this has been so fun, which feels weird to say considering how heavy this is, but thank you so much.

谢谢邀请我们。

Thank you for having us.

谢谢你，MJ。总是很愉快。

Thank you, MJ. Always a pleasure.

也感谢所有在线和我们一起阅读的朋友们。再次提醒，我们有一个文章标题读书会。阅读《我们不分离》香港篇及书评。欢迎在那里继续讨论。如之前所说，现在是公布四月读书会选书的时候了。

And thank you to everyone online who read with us. Again, we have an article headline book club. Read We Do Not Part by Hong Kong with the book review. Continue the conversation there. And as promised, now is the time for our April book club review.

四月我们将阅读亚当·罗斯的《游戏世界》。我们已在《纽约时报》网站上线了以'读书会：阅读亚当·罗斯《游戏世界》及书评'为题的文章。欢迎在那里与其他读者交流。此外我们还将在4月25日播出的播客节目中讨论这部小说。非常期待与你们分享这本书。

In April, we will be reading PlayWorld by Adam Ross. We have an article headlined book club, read PlayWorld by Adam Ross with book review up on the New York Times' website. Chat with us and other readers there. And then we'll also be discussing the novel here on the podcast that airs on April 25. We can't wait to talk about that book with you.

那么在此期间，祝大家阅读愉快。

But in the meantime, happy reading.

这是我们由MJ·富兰克林主持的每月书评读书会圆桌讨论。他与艾米丽·艾肯和劳伦·克里斯蒂安森一起讨论了香港的《我们不分离》。我是《纽约时报书评》的编辑吉尔伯特·克鲁兹。感谢您的收听。

That was our monthly book review book club roundtable hosted by MJ Franklin. He and Emily Aiken and Lauren Christiansen talked about Hong Kong's We Do Not Part. I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review. Thank you for listening.