美国国家公共电台 NPR 'American War' Explores The Universality Of Revenge

 

LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Writer Omar El Akkad spent much of his career as a journalist covering the many revolutions and wars in the Middle East for Canada's Globe and Mail. His debut¹ novel, though, is set in a United States that is riven by conflict.

It's 2075, and America has been beset² by flooding linked to climate change. The president has banned the use of fossil fuels. The southern states have broken away looking to protect the coal mining industry, and a rabid civil war is taking place. Omar El Akkad joins us now to talk about the dystopian world he created in his new book "American War" and what inspired it. Welcome to the program.

OMAR EL AKKAD: Thanks for having me.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: The main character of the book is a young girl. Her name is Sarat Chesnut. She lives in Louisiana in what is known in the book as the free southern state. Who is she at the beginning of the novel?

EL AKKAD: She - of all the characters I've written, she's the only one who came to me sort of fully³ formed. At the start of the book, she's six years old. And to me, she's sort of this very curious, trusting, defiant⁴ young girl whose chief attribute is this kind of rebellion against unknowing. She wants to know as much as possible. And the central arc of the book is essentially⁵ her life and how her desire to know - her curiosity is sort of used against her during this war.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Sarat is forced to flee with her family, and she ends up in a vast refugee camp where she gets recruited, essentially. She becomes a weapon in this civil war, and she's kind of transformed by hate. She seems like she's not exactly a heroine that you'd read about in "The Hunger Games" but something rather darker.

EL AKKAD: Yeah. I didn't want to write a book with good guys and bad guys and a clear dividing line between them. The idea behind writing it when I first started had to do with the idea of the universality of revenge. There's no sort of foreign way of suffering - that any of us subjected to enough evil will become evil ourselves.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Is this a book about how someone becomes a terrorist?

EL AKKAD: In part. I talk about this as a sort of - as a Genesis moment for the book. But I remember distinctly I was watching this interview with a foreign affairs expert. And it was in the wake of the - there had been these sort of protests in an Afghan village against the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

And the interviewer's question was something along the lines of, why do they hate us so much? And as part of his answer, this expert noted⁶ that sometimes the U.S. forces have to go conduct these nighttime raids in these villages. And when they do this, they'll sometimes have to hold the women and children up at gunpoint. And they'll tear the places apart. And then he added, you know, in Afghan culture, this sort of thing is considered very offensive.

And I thought, you know, name me one culture on earth that wouldn't consider this sort of thing offensive? And so part of the book is - has to do with this idea that we all suffer the same way, and we become damaged by suffering in the same way regardless of which part of the world we grew up in or what we believe.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: One of the most jarring scenes in the book is of a massacre⁷ at the refugee camp. It reminds me of massacres⁸ we've heard about in the Middle East like Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon. She also ends up captured - Sarat - and tortured for years in what is obviously a clear reference to Guantanamo. Did you base it on these real events? I mean, you've covered them. You write about massacres as someone who has reported on them.

EL AKKAD: A lot of it was based on things I'd researched, things I'd seen. What I did was, essentially, just dress up the past and the present in different clothes. I mean, I never set out to write a novel about the future. A lot of this is stuff that happened. It just - it happened to people who are fairly far away.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: It reminds me - you know, Joseph Conrad said he wanted to write the "Heart Of Darkness" as nonfiction, but he thought no one would ever believe the horrors taking place in the Belgian Congo, so he decided⁹ to write it as fiction. Do you think that's why you wrote your book this way because as you say, rightly, there are horrors of war being enacted¹⁰ in other parts of the world?

EL AKKAD: There's not much in here that's fully unanchored from something that happened in the real world. And I - it was interesting for me because I spent the last 10 years writing nonfiction. I've spent last years - 10 years writing journalism¹¹. And so it's very interesting for me to take that world and recast it as something fictional¹². But there's nothing here that doesn't have some kind of analog¹³ in the world in something that really happened.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: At the end of the book, we see the main character turn into, essentially, a biological weapon. And I'm wondering, are we supposed to have sympathy for her at the end? Are we supposed to understand her road to this very terrible act that she commits?

EL AKKAD: I don't think you're supposed to have sympathy for her. My only hope is that you understand why she did it. I think one of the things that's been lost in this incredibly sort of polarized world we live in is the idea that it's possible to understand without taking somebody's side.

And so my only hope is that when you get to the end of the book, you're not on her side. You don't support her. You're not willing to apologize for her, but you understand how she got to the place where she is.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Omar El Akkad - his debut novel is "American War." Thanks so much for joining us.

EL AKKAD: Thank you.

1 debut   

n.首次演出，初次露面

参考例句：

• That same year he made his Broadway debut, playing a suave radio journalist.在那同一年里，他初次在百老汇登台，扮演一个温文而雅的电台记者。
• The actress made her debut in the new comedy.这位演员在那出新喜剧中首次登台演出。

2 beset   

v.镶嵌；困扰，包围

参考例句：

• She wanted to enjoy her retirement without being beset by financial worries.她想享受退休生活而不必为金钱担忧。
• The plan was beset with difficulties from the beginning.这项计划自开始就困难重重。

3 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

4 defiant   

adj.无礼的，挑战的

参考例句：

• With a last defiant gesture,they sang a revolutionary song as they were led away to prison.他们被带走投入监狱时，仍以最后的反抗姿态唱起了一支革命歌曲。
• He assumed a defiant attitude toward his employer.他对雇主采取挑衅的态度。

5 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

6 noted   

adj.著名的，知名的

参考例句：

• The local hotel is noted for its good table.当地的那家酒店以餐食精美而著称。
• Jim is noted for arriving late for work.吉姆上班迟到出了名。

7 massacre   

n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀

参考例句：

• There was a terrible massacre of villagers here during the war.在战争中，这里的村民惨遭屠杀。
• If we forget the massacre,the massacre will happen again!忘记了大屠杀，大屠杀就有可能再次发生！

8 massacres   

大屠杀( massacre的名词复数 )； 惨败

参考例句：

• The time is past for guns and killings and massacres. 动不动就用枪、动不动就杀、大规模屠杀的时代已经过去了。 来自教父部分
• Numberless recent massacres were still vivid in their recollection. 近来那些不可胜数的屠杀，在他们的头脑中记忆犹新。

9 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

10 enacted   

制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• legislation enacted by parliament 由议会通过的法律
• Outside in the little lobby another scene was begin enacted. 外面的小休息室里又是另一番景象。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

11 journalism   

n.新闻工作，报业

参考例句：

• He's a teacher but he does some journalism on the side.他是教师，可还兼职做一些新闻工作。
• He had an aptitude for journalism.他有从事新闻工作的才能。

12 fictional   

adj.小说的，虚构的

参考例句：

• The names of the shops are entirely fictional.那些商店的名字完全是虚构的。
• The two authors represent the opposite poles of fictional genius.这两位作者代表了天才小说家两个极端。

13 analog   

n.类似物，模拟

参考例句：

• The analog signal contains high-frequency video information,which helps make up the picture.模拟信号包括有助于构成图像的高频视频信息。
• The analog computer measures continuously,without proceeding step by step.模拟计算机不是一步一步地进行，而是连续地进行量度。