Best books of 2023: FT critics’ picks
2023 年最佳图书：英国《金融时报》评论家精选

Roula Khalaf 鲁拉-哈拉夫
FT editor 英国《金融时报》编辑

Le mage du Kremlin (The Wizard of the Kremlin) is a captivating novel that sails close, perhaps too close, to reality. Written in French by Giuliano da Empoli before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and recently translated into English, the novel’s protagonist is a Putin spin-doctor who seems eerily based on a longtime adviser of the Russian leader. The book was a sensation in France, praised by some for its insights into cold-blooded power, and criticised by others as the reflection of misguided French political fascination with Putin.
Le mage du Kremlin》（《克里姆林宫的魔法师》）是一部引人入胜的小说，它贴近现实，也许是太贴近了。小说的主人公是一位普京的自旋医生，他的原型似乎就是俄罗斯领导人的一位长期顾问。该书在法国引起轰动，一些人称赞它对冷血权力的洞察力，另一些人则批评它反映了法国对普京错误的政治迷恋。

Janine Gibson 珍妮-吉布森
FT Weekend editor FT 周末编辑

I was thrilled by Francis Spufford’s novel Cahokia Jazz which takes place in a week but somehow creates centuries. An unexplained splintering of history finds us in a 1922 noirish American city consumed with railroads and religion and race that is both familiar and strange. In less sure hands it would be chaos, but if you rightly loved Golden Hill, you’ll know to trust the author.
弗朗西斯-斯帕福德（Francis Spufford）的小说《卡霍基亚爵士乐》让我激动不已，故事发生在一周之内，却不知不觉创造了几个世纪。一段无法解释的历史碎片将我们带到了 1922 年美国的一座黑色城市，这座城市充满了铁路、宗教和种族问题，既熟悉又陌生。如果没有足够的把握，这将是一部混乱的作品，但如果你喜欢《金山》，你就会知道要相信作者。

Frederick Studemann 弗雷德里克-斯图特曼
FT literary editor FT 文学编辑

Judging a book prize means that your reading list is determined for you — and it tends to be a very long one. On the upside, you get to enjoy a wonderful range of unexpected writing and subjects. This year’s Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction took us judges into the worlds of music and memory, geopolitics, history, mutiny on the high seas and beyond. Quite a journey and lots of really great reads. In the end we chose John Vaillant’s Fire Weather (Sceptre/Knopf), a thrillingly detailed, pacily told account of a massive wildfire in the oil sands region of northern Canada that became a climate disaster. Skilfully drawing together multiple perspectives, it highlights our toxic relationship with fossil fuels. A gripping — if terrifying — read. With that now behind me, I’ve enjoyed the chance to finally catch up on The Lock-Up by John Banville, the latest addition to his Strafford and Quirke detective series, in which the repressed and sinister world of 1950s Ireland is exposed in beautiful, sometimes chilling prose. Perfect for this time of year. I’m now looking forward to the audiobook of Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood — a thriller with a climactic twist.
担任图书奖评委意味着你的阅读书目已为你确定--而且往往会很长。好的一面是，你可以欣赏到各种意想不到的作品和主题。今年的 Baillie Gifford 非虚构作品奖将我们评委带入了音乐与记忆、地缘政治、历史、公海叛变等世界。这是一次相当精彩的旅程，其中不乏真正的好书。最终，我们选择了约翰-韦兰特（John Vaillant）的《天气之火》（Fire Weather，Sceptre/Knopf 出版社），该书以平和的笔调详细描述了加拿大北部油砂地区的一场大规模野火，这场野火演变成了一场气候灾难。该书巧妙地将多种视角融合在一起，突出了我们与化石燃料之间的有毒关系。这本书读来扣人心弦，甚至令人恐惧。现在，我终于有机会读约翰-班维尔（John Banville）的《禁闭室》（The Lock-Up），这是他的斯特拉福德和奎克侦探系列的最新作品，书中用优美的、有时令人不寒而栗的散文揭示了 20 世纪 50 年代爱尔兰压抑而险恶的世界。非常适合每年的这个时候阅读。我现在正期待着埃莉诺-卡顿（Eleanor Catton）的《伯南林》（Birnam Wood）的有声读物--这是一部高潮迭起的惊悚小说。

Rana Foroohar 拉纳-福鲁哈尔
FT global business correspondent
英国《金融时报》全球商业记者

A poetic book about slavery may sound like an oxymoron, but Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward hits the mark with this novel about a young woman, Annis, living in antebellum North Carolina and New Orleans. Sold south by her own father, she is buoyed on a Dante-esque journey to a sugar cane plantation by spirits and stories of her woman-warrior ancestor in Africa, passed on by her beloved mother, who finds creative ways to keep her legacy alive. Ward’s writing is like a spirit that flits and flies, landing on Annis’ painful reality while also going deep into the rich inner world that sustains her in a hellish time and place.
杰斯敏-沃德（Jesmyn Ward）的这本《让我们降临》（Let Us Descend）是一本关于奴隶制的诗集，听起来似乎有些矛盾，但这本小说却写出了一个年轻女子安尼斯（Annis）的故事，她生活在前王朝时期的北卡罗来纳州和新奥尔良。她被亲生父亲卖到南方，在一次但丁式的甘蔗种植园之旅中，她被非洲女战士祖先的灵魂和故事所鼓舞。沃德的文字就像一个飞舞的精灵，在安尼斯痛苦的现实中着陆，同时也深入到丰富的内心世界，在地狱般的时空里支撑着她。

Nilanjana Roy 尼兰贾娜-罗伊
FT columnist 英国《金融时报》专栏作家

For me the novel that spoke most clearly to our times is Salman Rushdie’s timeless epic, Victory City. His heroine, the 250-year-old Pampa Kampana, is a sorceress and a survivor of grief and abuse by her mentor, conjures empires into hopeful existence, but lives to see them darken into tyranny and then collapse. Perhaps, Kampana says, storytellers will have the last word. It takes Rushdie, a courageous survivor and witness himself, to remind us that “words are the only victors”.
萨尔曼-拉什迪（Salman Rushdie）的永恒史诗《胜利之城》（Victory City）是我认为最贴近我们时代的小说。他笔下的女主人公，250 岁的潘帕-坎帕娜，是一位女魔法师，也是她的导师悲痛欲绝、虐待她的幸存者，她将帝国幻化成充满希望的存在，但却眼睁睁地看着它们在黑暗中变成暴政，然后崩溃。坎帕娜说，也许，讲故事的人将拥有最后的话语权。拉什迪，一位勇敢的幸存者和见证人，提醒我们 "文字是唯一的胜利者"。

Tim Harford 蒂姆-哈福德
FT columnist 英国《金融时报》专栏作家

Amy Edmondson’s Right Kind of Wrong unpicks a morass of confusion, contradiction and glib happy talk about the joys of failure. As something of a connoisseur of human error, I was delighted to see clear and useful distinctions between different kinds of failure, along with vivid examples and evidence-based advice about how to avoid failure when you can and learn from it when you can’t.
艾米-埃德蒙森（Amy Edmondson）的《正确的错误》（Right Kind of Wrong）一书揭开了关于失败的乐趣的困惑、矛盾和花言巧语。作为人类错误的鉴赏家，我很高兴看到书中对不同类型的失败进行了清晰而有用的区分，并提供了生动的例子和有据可依的建议，告诉我们如何在可以避免失败的时候避免失败，在不能避免失败的时候从失败中吸取教训。

Gillian Tett 吉莉安-泰特
FT columnist 英国《金融时报》专栏作家

There are few figures as iconic and controversial as Elon Musk. There are also few biographers who have had so much access to powerful people as Walter Isaacson. So his biography Elon Musk is a must-read — albeit a long and dense endeavour. The sections which have grabbed most attention are those about Musk’s tortured childhood, tangled love life and his controversial dance with Twitter. But, in my view, it is the details about his attitude towards artificial intelligence at Tesla, or his dealings with the Ukrainian government, which are most fascinating. Whatever you think of Musk, an illuminating book that forces us to confront a crucial question: are innovators always half-mad?
很少有像埃隆-马斯克这样具有标志性和争议性的人物。也很少有传记作者能像沃尔特-艾萨克森（Walter Isaacson）这样有如此多的机会接触到权势人物。因此，他的传记《埃隆-马斯克》是一本必读书--尽管篇幅很长，内容也很稠密。其中最引人关注的部分是关于马斯克饱受折磨的童年、纠结的感情生活以及他与推特之间备受争议的关系。但在我看来，他在特斯拉对人工智能的态度或他与乌克兰政府打交道的细节才是最吸引人的。无论你对马斯克有什么看法，这本书都很有启发性，它迫使我们面对一个关键问题：创新者总是半疯吗？

Stephen Bush 斯蒂芬-布什
FT columnist 英国《金融时报》专栏作家

Clemens Meyer’s While We Were Dreaming is the highlight of another strong year from what I think is currently the UK’s most exciting publisher of fiction, Fitzcarraldo: it tells the story of four teenage boys at the bottom of east German society at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Katy Derbyshire’s translation brings it into English superbly, giving it the feel and brio of a great American coming-of-age novel.
克莱门斯-迈耶（Clemens Meyer）的《当我们做梦的时候》（While We Were Dreaming）是我认为英国目前最令人兴奋的小说出版商 Fitzcarraldo 今年又一力作：它讲述了柏林墙倒塌时东德社会底层四个少年的故事。凯蒂-德比希尔（Katy Derbyshire）的译本将其出色地译成了英语，赋予了它美国伟大成长小说的感觉和活力。

Jo Ellison 乔-埃里森
HTSI editor HTSI 编辑

My Name Is Barbra: And she’s going to remind you of that often in this marathon retelling of her more than 60-year career (a 48-hour appointment if, like me, you want to hear it from the woman herself). A lot of Streisand’s autobiography retreads a familiar journey — part corrective, part confessional, a lot of coffee-flavour ice cream. But there’s a strange comfort in her transition from Pulaski Street scrap to EGOT-winning international diva that recalls a bygone era, and it’s all the more delicious when delivered in her distinctive Brooklyn brogue.
我的名字叫岚：在这本关于她 60 多年演艺生涯的马拉松式复述中，她会经常提醒你这一点（如果你像我一样，想听她亲口说，可以预约 48 小时）。史翠珊自传中的很多内容都是她熟悉的历程--一部分是纠正，一部分是忏悔，还有很多咖啡味的冰淇淋。但是，她从普拉斯基街的废品到获得 EGOT 的国际天后的转变过程中，有一种奇特的舒适感，让人回想起那个逝去的时代。

Claer Barrett 克莱尔-巴雷特
FT consumer editor 英国《金融时报》消费者编辑

Dragons’ Den star Deborah Meaden made her first buck when she was seven years old selling flowers from her garden. Her richly illustrated book Why Money Matters aims to teach six to nine-year-olds how money shapes the world we live in and is stuffed with facts about earning money, savings interest and even tax. It won the vote of my seven-year-old twin nephews.
龙穴节目明星黛博拉-米登七岁时卖花园里的花赚到了第一笔钱。她撰写的《为什么钱很重要》一书图文并茂，旨在教导六至九岁的孩子们金钱如何塑造我们生活的世界，书中充斥着关于赚钱、储蓄利息甚至税收的知识。这本书赢得了我七岁双胞胎侄子的投票。

Elaine Moore 伊莱恩-摩尔
Deputy editor of Lex Lex 杂志副主编

Gabrielle Zevin’s book Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow has the most lyrical description of video gaming I’ve ever read. The story of two children who grow up to design games is also a beautiful examination of our desire to control and rewrite reality when it doesn’t go our way.
加布里埃尔-泽文（Gabrielle Zevin）的《明天，明天，明天》一书是我读过的对电子游戏最抒情的描述。书中讲述了两个孩子长大后设计游戏的故事，也是对我们在现实不如意时想要控制和改写现实的美好审视。

Robert Shrimsley 罗伯特-史林斯利
UK chief political commentator
英国首席政治评论员

Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad by Daniel Finkelstein is a remarkable memoir of his parents’ miraculous survival of Hitler’s Final Solution and Stalin’s purges and a celebration of moderation and liberal democracy. Finkelstein (full disclosure — he’s a friend) manages to infuse a story of shocking tragedy with humour, convey power with understatement and, most important of all deals a vital blow to those still-surviving apologists for Soviet communism who fail to recognise it was every bit as evil as fascism.
丹尼尔-芬克尔斯坦（Daniel Finkelstein）所著的《希特勒、斯大林、妈妈和爸爸》（Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad）是一部非凡的回忆录，讲述了他的父母在希特勒的 "最终解决方案 "和斯大林的大清洗中奇迹般地幸存下来的故事，同时也是对温和与自由民主的赞美。芬克尔斯坦（完全公开--他是我的朋友）成功地为这个令人震惊的悲剧故事注入了幽默感，以轻描淡写的方式传达了力量，最重要的是给那些仍在为苏联共产主义辩护的人以沉重打击，因为他们没有认识到苏联共产主义与法西斯主义一样邪恶。

Henry Mance 亨利-曼斯
FT chief features writer 英国《金融时报》首席特稿撰稿人

Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is a fascinating depiction of Martin Luther King Jr — his brilliance, his flaws and his many shameless opponents. King’s message of non-violence, which may have been partly a reaction against his father’s beatings, should be heard anew today both by those who demand social change and those who complain about disruptive protests.
乔纳森-艾格的《金：金的一生》是对小马丁-路德-金的精彩描述--他的才华、缺点和许多无耻的对手。金的非暴力思想可能部分源于他对父亲殴打的反应，今天，无论是那些要求社会变革的人，还是那些抱怨破坏性抗议活动的人，都应该重新聆听金的思想。

Lilah Raptopoulos 莉拉-拉普托普洛斯
Host, Life and Art podcast, from FT Weekend
FT Weekend》生活与艺术播客主持人

Lorrie Moore’s novel I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home was freakish and odd, but somehow it looms largest in my mind. A man takes a road trip with the corpse of his dead ex-lover. That’s the plot. But really it’s an exploration of grief, and a masterclass in dialogue and quiet conversations. Moore is a pro at work: mournful, hilarious and gross, sometimes all in one sentence.
洛丽-摩尔（Lorrie Moore）的小说《如果这不是我的家，我就是无家可归者》（I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home）既畸形又古怪，但不知何故，它在我心中却占据了最大的篇幅。一个男人带着他死去的前情人的尸体上路旅行。这就是剧情。但实际上，这是一部关于悲伤的探索之作，也是一部关于对话和安静交谈的大师级作品。摩尔是一位创作高手：哀伤、搞笑、恶心，有时在一句话中就能尽显。

Anjli Raval
FT management editor FT 管理编辑

Ed Conway’s Material World is a self-described whistle-stop tour of the six vital resources that dictate our modern existence. Without sand, salt, iron, copper, oil and lithium “normal life as we know it would disintegrate”, he says. While much emphasis is put on humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels and the need to reduce consumption, the same is not said for other materials that are used to make everything from concrete, electrical wiring and batteries to fertiliser and steel. Conway compellingly tells the story of these six materials, their intertwined existences and the magic behind everyday substances that make our world go around.
艾德-康威的《物质世界》自称是对决定我们现代生存的六种重要资源的一次 "哨子之旅"。他说，如果没有沙、盐、铁、铜、石油和锂，"我们所知的正常生活就会瓦解"。虽然人们都在强调人类对化石燃料的依赖以及减少消耗的必要性，但对用于制造混凝土、电线、电池、化肥和钢材等一切物品的其他材料却不以为然。康威引人入胜地讲述了这六种材料的故事、它们相互交织的存在以及日常物质背后的魔力，它们让我们的世界运转起来。

Books of the Year 2023
2023 年的书籍

All this week, FT writers and critics shared their favourites. Some highlights are:
本周，《金融时报》的作家和评论家们分享了他们的最爱。其中一些亮点是

Monday: Business by Andrew Hill
星期一安德鲁-希尔的《商业
Tuesday: Environment by Pilita Clark
星期二环境》 作者：Pilita Clark
Wednesday: Economics by Martin Wolf
星期三马丁-沃尔夫的《经济学
Thursday: Fiction by Laura Battle and Andrew Dickson
星期四劳拉-巴特尔和安德鲁-迪克森的小说
Friday: Politics by Gideon Rachman
星期五政治》，吉迪恩-拉赫曼著
Saturday: Critics’ choice
星期六影评人之选

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