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Ann Morgan决定用一年的时间去尝试阅读世界上每个国家的一本书。为了达成这个目标，她利用社交平台发出了求助信息，接下来发生的一幕幕故事令她感动。“如果你想读懂整个世界，你要以一种开放和谦卑的心态去拥抱它，那么整个世界都会来帮助你。”

I used to think of myself as a fairly cosmopolitan[见多识广的] sort of person, but my bookshelves told a different story. Apart from a few Indian novels and the odd[零星的] Australian and South African book, my literature collection consisted of British and American titles. Worse still, I hardly ever tackled[解决] anything in translation. My reading was confined to stories by English-speaking authors.

以前我一直以为自己还算是见多识广的那种人，但是我的书架却显示出另一番景象。除了寥寥几本印度小说和孤零零一本澳大利亚和南非的书， 我收藏的文学作品全都来自英国和美国。更糟糕的是，我几乎没有读过任何译本。我的阅读仅限于英语作家所写的故事。

So, at the start of 2012, I set myself the challenge of trying to read a book from every country in a year to find out what I was missing. 

因此，2012年伊始，我给自己设了一个挑战，即设法在一年时间里阅读每个国家各一本书，看看自己过去都错过了些什么。

With no idea how to go about[着手干] this beyond a sneaking suspicion[毋庸置疑] that I was unlikely to find publications from nearly 200 nations on the shelves of my local bookshop, I decided to ask the planet’s readers for help. I created a blog called A Year of Reading the World and put out an appeal for suggestions of titles that I could read in English.

我不知道该如何着手，而且毋庸置疑，我也不太可能在当地书店的书架上里找到近200个国家的书籍，于是我决定向全球的读者求助。我创建了一个名为“一年读遍全世界”的博客，发布了一个请求，请大家推荐可供我阅读的英语版书籍的书目。

The response was amazing. Before I knew it, people all over the planet were getting in touch with ideas and offers of help. Some posted me books from their home countries. Others did hours of research on my behalf. In addition, several writers, like Turkmenistan’s Ak Welsapar and Panama’s Juan David Morgan, sent me unpublished translations of their novels, giving me a rare opportunity to read works otherwise unavailable to the 62% of Brits who only speak English. Even with such an extraordinary team of bibliophiles[藏书家, 书籍爱好者] behind me, however, sourcing books was no easy task. For a start, with translations making up only around 4.5 per cent of literary works published in the UK and Ireland, getting English versions of stories was tricky.

人们的回复令人惊异。不知不觉间，来自全球各地的人们都开始联系我，为我提供想法和帮助。有人将自己国家的书寄给我，有人替我做了数小时的调研。此外，有几个作家，包括土库曼斯坦的阿克·威尔斯帕和巴拿马的胡安·大卫·摩根还寄来了他们未出版的小说译本，让我有难得的机会去阅读62%只会英语的英国人无法接触到的作品。不过，纵然我的身后有这样一个非凡的藏书爱好者团队，寻获书籍依旧不是一件容易的事。首先，面对译本仅占英国和爱尔兰出版的文学作品的4.5%这一现状，想要获得英语版本的书籍就是一个棘手的问题。

Small states

小国难题

This was particularly true for francophone[讲法语的] and lusophone[说葡萄牙语的] African countries. There’s precious little[一点点]) on offer for states such as the Comoros, Madagascar, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique—I had to rely on unpublished manuscripts for several of these. And when it came to the tiny island nation of Sao Tome & Principe, I would have been stuck without a team of volunteers in Europe and the US who translated a book of short stories by Santomean writer Olinda Beja just so that I could have something to read.

这一难题对说法语和葡萄牙语的非洲国家尤为明显。某些国家的书在售的少之又少，如科摩罗、马达加斯加岛、几内亚比绍共和国和莫桑比克，对于其中几个国家，我不得不依赖于未出版的手稿。而在寻找圣多美和普林西比这一小岛国的作品时，若不是欧洲和美国的一批志愿者帮忙，我就会陷入困境。正因这些志愿者翻译了圣多美作家奥林达·贝雅的一部短篇小说集，我才有了阅读材料。

Then there were places where stories are rarely written down. If you’re after a good yarn[故事] in the Marshall Islands, for example, you’re more likely to go and ask the local chief’s permission to hear one of the local storytellers than you are to pick up a book. Similarly, in Niger, legends have traditionally been the preserve[独占的领域] of griots[西非歌舞艺人] from around the age of seven). Written versions of their fascinating performances are few and far between[稀少的])—and can only ever capture a small part of the experience of listening for yourself.

还有一些地方几乎没有故事写下来。比如，你若想在马绍尔群岛找一个好故事，很可能要去征求当地首领的同意，以便去听当地某个说书人讲述，而不是去捧起一本书阅读。同样，在尼日尔，传奇故事历来是歌舞艺人的专属领域。他们精彩表演的书面版本寥寥无几，而且也仅能描述出现场听书感受的一小部分。

If that wasn’t enough, politics threw me the odd curveball [ 出人意料地给某人设置障碍] too. The foundation of South Sudan on 9 July 2011—although a joyful event for its citizens, who had lived through decades of civil war to get there—posed something of a challenge. Lacking roads, hospitals, schools or basic infrastructure, the six-month-old country seemed unlikely to have published any books since its creation. If it hadn’t been for a local contact putting me in touch with writer Julia Duany, who penned me a bespoke[专门定做的] short story, I might have had to catch a plane to Juba and try to get someone to tell me a tale face to face.

这还不够，就连政治都冷不丁给我丢来个不寻常的难题。2011年7月9日，南苏丹共和国成立了。尽管这对它的人民来说是一件值得高兴的大事——他们经受了几十年内战才走到今天，但这也造成了某种挑战。缺少公路、医院、学校或基础设施，这个只有六个月历史的国家似乎自建国以来就不太可能出版过什么书籍。若不是通过与当地人接触联系上了一位名为茱莉亚·端尼的作家，她专门为我写了一篇短篇小说，我可能还得乘飞机去朱巴，设法找一个人面对面地给我讲个故事。

All in all, tracking down stories like these took as much time as the reading and blogging. It was a tall order[难以完成的任务] to fit it all in[安排时间做(某事)] around work and many were the nights when I sat bleary[惺忪的]-eyed into the small hours[下半夜] to make sure I stuck to my target of reading one book every 1.87 days.

总而言之，我在寻找此类故事上花费的时间与阅读和写博客花费的时间一样多。工作之余要做这件事真是高难度任务，许多时候都是在夜晚，我睡眼惺忪地坐到下半夜，以确保自己能坚持完成每1.87天读完一本书的目标。

Head space

精神世界

But the effort was worth it. As I made my way through the planet’s literary landscapes, extraordinary things started to happen. Far from simply armchair travelling[通过看电视、电影、小说等方式足不出户了解世界], I found I was inhabiting the mental space of the storytellers. In the company of Bhutanese writer Kunzang Choden, I wasn’t simply visiting exotic[异国情调的] temples, but seeing them as a local Buddhist would. Transported by the imagination of Galsan Tschinag, I wandered through the preoccupations[全神贯注] of a shepherd boy in Mongolia’s Altai Mountains.  With Nu Nu Yi as my guide, I experienced a religious festival in Myanmar from a transgender medium’s[灵媒]) perspective.

不过，这些努力是值得的。当我克服万难在世界文学美景中前行的时候，奇特的事情开始出现了。和足不出户通过影视等方式了解世界的旅游截然不同，我发现自己置身于作家们的精神世界中。在名为昆桑·秋殿的不丹作家的陪同下，我不仅参观了一座座颇具异国风情的寺庙，还从当地佛教徒的角度去了解了它们。乘着格尔森·契那歌的想象力，我徜徉在蒙古国阿尔泰山一个小牧童专注的世界里。有努努依当向导，我得以从一个变性人巫师的角度体验缅甸的宗教节日。

In the hands of gifted writers, I discovered, bookpacking[该词从backpacking (背包旅行)演变而来，在此指“读书旅行”] offered something a physical traveller could hope to experience only rarely: it took me inside the thoughts of individuals living far away and showed me the world through their eyes. More powerful than a thousand news reports, these stories not only opened my mind to the nuts and bolts[基本内容] of life in other places, but opened my heart to the way people there might feel. 

我发现，通过才华横溢的作家的笔触，读书旅行可以提供身体力行的旅行者不敢奢望的体验：它带领我进入远居他乡的人们的思想，为我展示了他们眼中的世界。这些故事远远胜过一千条新闻报道，它们不仅开拓了我的思想，让我了解到别处的生活点滴，而且也让我敞开心灵，去体会当地人可能的感受方式。

And that in turn changed my thinking. Through reading the stories shared with me by bookish strangers around the globe, I realised I was not an isolated person, but part of a network that stretched all over the planet.

这反过来也改变了我的想法。通过阅读全球素昧平生的读书爱好者与我分享的故事，我意识到自己并非孤立的个体，而是遍布全球的网络中的一员。

One by one, the country names on the list that had begun as an intellectual exercise at the start of the year transformed into vital[充满活力的], vibrant[充满生气的] places filled with laughter, love, anger, hope and fear. Lands that had once seemed exotic and remote became close and familiar to me—places I could identify with[与……联系起来]. At its best, I learned, fiction makes the world real. 

清单上那些在年初时开启的像一场智力测验似的国家名字一个接一个地变成了生机勃勃、充满活力的地方，充盈着欢笑、爱意、愤怒、希望和恐惧。那些曾经看起来充满异国情调又遥不可及的土地变得亲近又熟悉，成为与我有所关联的地方。最棒的是，我认识到，虚构的小说让世界变得真实。