内容简介

　　莱比锡图书奖短名单作品（2008），入选《卫报》21世纪百佳图书（2019）。

　　一位建筑师在柏林郊外的湖畔建造了梦想中的夏日别墅，但他不知道这片土地曾经和将会经历什么：一个年轻女子发疯之后溺湖身亡；犹太邻居贱卖地产然后消失；长驱直入的红军征用了房屋；逃离纳粹政权的作家流亡归来，想从废墟之下拖拽出一方可以长久生息的理想家园；数十年后两德统一，她的孙女被迫放弃产权，接手方正是它最初建造者的继承人……

　　同一个地点，不同时代的居住者们离散又到来。历史巨大的无形力量不断侵蚀着人类建立持久价值的努力，而在所有激情、创痛、和解与命运之上，矗立着一片任何癫狂或动荡都无法真正改变的风景。

　　《客乡》“冰山一般超然”的诗意叙事是德国沧桑百年的回声，从魏玛共和国到统一后的岁月，十二块人生碎片构成一幅镶嵌画，过去与未来坍缩其中，故事真正的讲述者是时间，“永恒的生命，已存在于人类个体的一生中”。

　　作者简介

　　燕妮·埃彭贝克（Jenny Erpenbeck），1967年出生于东柏林，德国作家、戏剧导演，代表作有长篇小说《客乡》《白日尽头》《时世逝》，中篇小说集《文字之书》，另著有多部剧作、散文，曾获得汉斯·法拉达奖（2014）、《独立报》外国小说奖（2015）、托马斯·曼奖（2016）、斯特雷加文学奖（2017）、德意志联邦共和国功绩勋章（2017）等，作品已被译为二十多种语言。

　　译者简介：李斯本，伦敦大学金史密斯学院文学学士，伦敦政治经济学院传播学硕士，译有《游隼》《去往猴面包树的旅程》。

　　精彩书评

　　“这一代蕞杰出、蕞重要的德语小说家。”——詹姆斯·伍德（著名文学评论家）

　　“历史事件与个人意志的交汇点是她书中反复出现的主题，她笔下女主人公的非正统视角，使她们得以与‘历史’保持着一个倾斜的角度，从而刷新了读者对于这个主题的认知和思考。”——丹尼尔·门德尔松（著名文学评论家）

　　“她的作品一个了不起的成就在于，通过那些在历史转折中失落的人与物的故事，含蓄地展现历史磅礴的进程……‘过去’被置于‘现在’的表层之下，但它的形状终究会显现出来。”——劳伦·奥伊勒，《纽约客》

　　“在世作家中蕞优秀和激动人心的一位……埃彭贝克的小说大多是一个年轻女人的故事，同时也是一个充满黑暗秘密的国家的寓言。在《客乡》中，寓言色彩被淡化了，历史更明确地介入，叙事的画布也更宽阔。这本书的篇幅不长，但它的成就和反响却是巨大的。”——米歇尔·法柏（著名小说家）

Content introduction

Leipzig Book Prize shortlist (2008), selected for the Guardian 100 Best Books of the 21st Century (2019).

An architect builds his dream summer house on the edge of a lake outside Berlin, but he has no idea what the land has been and will be: a young woman goes mad and drowns in the lake; Jewish neighbors sell land cheaply and disappear; The advancing Red Army commandeered houses; The writer who fled the Nazi regime returned from exile and wanted to drag out from under the ruins an ideal home where he could live for a long time; When Germany reunified decades later, her granddaughter was forced to relinquish the property to the heirs of its original builder...

In the same place, the inhabitants of different ages dispersed and came again. The great invisible forces of history constantly erode human efforts to build lasting values, and above all passion, pain, reconciliation, and destiny stands a landscape that no madness or turmoil can truly change.

The poetic narrative of "the iceberg of detachment" in "The Country of Visitors" is the echo of the vicissitudes of Germany for a hundred years, from the Weimar Republic to the years after reunification, twelve pieces of life constitute a Mosaic, in which the past and the future collapse, and the true narrator of the story is time, "eternal life, which has existed in the life of the human individual."

About the author

Jenny Erpenbeck (born in East Berlin in 1967) is a German writer and theater director, whose representative works include novels such as "Guest Country", "The End of the Day" and "Time is Gone", novelets such as "The Book of Words", and several plays and essays. He has won the Hans Falada Prize (2014), The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (2015), the Thomas Mann Prize (2016), the Strega Prize for Literature (2017), and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2017), and his works have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Lisborne, BA, Goldsmiths, University of London, MA, Communication Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science, is the author of "Peregrine Falcon" and "Journey to the Baobab Tree".

Wonderful book review

"The most outstanding and important German novelist of his generation." -- James Wood, famous literary critic

"The intersection of historical events and personal will is a recurring theme in her books, and the unorthodox perspective of her heroines allows them to maintain a slanted Angle with 'history', thereby refreshing the reader's perception and thinking about the subject." -- Daniel Mendelssohn, famous literary critic

"One of the great achievements of her work is that it implicitly shows the sweep of history through the stories of people and things lost in the turning of history... The past is placed beneath the surface of the present, but its shape will eventually emerge." -- Lauren Oyler, The New Yorker

"One of the finest and most exciting writers alive... Eppenbeck's novel is mostly the story of a young woman, but also an allegory for a country full of dark secrets. In "Guest Country", the allegorical color is toned down, history is more explicitly involved, and the narrative canvas is broader. The length of the book is not long, but its achievement and response are enormous." -- Michel Faber, famous novelist