《栗树街的回忆》在那个物资匮乏、战祸频仍的贫瘠年代，“恐惧”是梦境的主要背景；而梦想，却抚慰了一颗颗彷徨的心灵，为人们在乌烟瘴气的现实中，找到可供喘息的净土。一九六九年，丹尼洛‧契斯的散文集《栗树街的回忆》（EarlySorrows）在贝尔格勒出版，最初是以塞尔维亚语印行，其后被译成英文，受到国际的瞩目。如作者在本书的后记所言，他承袭了母亲爱说融合事实与传说的僻好，因此他的创作，往往不是全然虚构，而是揉合了个人经验与感触，如梦似幻、风格独具的文体。全书以两次世界大战期间的南斯拉夫乡间为主要背景，并以男童安迪（安卓亚斯‧山姆）的第一人称叙事方式贯串全文。全文乍看之下，就像优美动人的乡间小品，安迪的生活看似无忧无虑，有着疼爱他的双亲和老是与他斗嘴的姊姊安娜，还有一只忠心的可爱小狗随侍在侧，然而敏感的安迪还是察觉出生活周遭隐然的变化，正如阴影般向他们逼近。首先是物资的短缺，让安迪必须受雇替人看牛；村子里不时有部队行经；接下来，亲友们相继被带走，从安迪的生活中消失。在当时，极权主义者正对犹太族裔展开种族清算，这是安迪所不明白的，他不了解父母为什么会对曾经引以为傲的商人血统又爱又惧，直到日后，他才明白亲人们成了大屠杀的牺牲者……

　　作者简介

　　丹尼洛·契斯（DaniloKiš，1935—1989）

　　二十世纪南斯拉夫最重要的作家。契斯出生于南斯拉夫的苏博蒂察市，“二战”期间，他的父亲在纳粹集中营遇害，母亲带着他和姐姐逃难到黑山，直到战争结束才回到南斯拉夫。他在贝尔格莱德大学比较文学系毕业后开始文学生涯，作品有《花园，灰烬》《沙漏》《达维多维奇之墓》《死亡百科全书》等，曾获得塞尔维亚NIN文学奖、美国布鲁诺·舒尔茨奖等诸多文学奖项,并被授予法国文学艺术骑士勋章。他的作品虽受到国际瞩目，在本国出版时却常引起奇特的骚动：《达维多维奇之墓》被诬蔑抄袭了索尔仁尼琴、乔伊斯、曼德尔施塔姆、博尔赫斯、梅德韦杰夫兄弟等作家，布罗茨基对此评论说：“一位作者若能在一本135页的小说里模仿这么多位风格迥异的作者，那么怎样赞美他都不为过。”他还称扬契斯是“一位独具风格的作家，他的作品几乎重新定义了悲剧”。1979年，契斯侨居巴黎。1989年，他因肺癌去世，据传他获得当年诺贝尔文学奖的呼声很高，“他的辞世中断了二十世纪下半叶全世界作家中最重要的文学旅程”（苏珊•桑塔格语）。

Memories of Chestnut Street In that barren era of scarcity and war, "fear" is the main background of the dream; And the dream, but to soothe a wandering soul, for people in the miasma of reality, to find a pure land for breathing. In 1969, Danilo Chase's collection of essays, EarlySorrows (Memories of Chestnut Street), was published in Belgrade, initially in Serbian, and later translated into English, receiving international attention. As the author said in the epilogue of this book, he inherited his mother's love of integrating facts and legends, so his creation is often not completely fictional, but a combination of personal experience and feelings, like a dream, a unique style. The book is set in the Yugoslav countryside during the two World Wars and is narrated in the first person by a boy named Andy (Andreas Sam). At first glance, the full text is like a beautiful and moving country sketch, Andy's life seems carefree, with his parents who love him and his sister Anna who always bicker with him, and a loyal cute dog with him at the side, but the sensitive Andy is still aware of the hidden changes around life, just like a shadow approaching them. The first is the shortage of materials, so that Andy must be hired to watch cows for others; From time to time there were troops in the village; Next, friends and family are taken away from Andy's life. At that time, the totalitarian is carrying out the racial liquidation of the Jewish race, which is what Andy does not understand, he does not understand why his parents are proud of the merchant blood love and fear, until later, he understands that their relatives became the victims of the Holocaust...

About the author

DaniloKi Chase (1935-1989)

The most important Yugoslav writer of the twentieth century. Chase was born in the Yugoslav city of Subotica. During World War II, his father was killed in a Nazi concentration camp, and his mother fled with him and his sister to Montenegro, only to return to Yugoslavia after the war. He began his literary career after graduating from the comparative literature department of the University of Belgrade. His works are Garden, Ashes, Hourglass, Tomb of Davydovich, Encyclopedia of the Dead, etc. He has won many literary awards such as the Serbian NIN Literature Prize, the Bruno Schulz Prize in the United States, and was awarded the Chevalier of Arts and Letters of France. Although his works received international attention, they often caused a strange stir when published in his own country: The Tomb of Davydovich was accused of copying writers such as Solzhenitsyn, Joyce, Mandelstam, Borges, and the Medvedev brothers, and Brodsky commented: "You can't praise an author enough to imitate so many different authors in a 135-page novel." He also called Chase "a writer of singular style whose work almost redefines tragedy." In 1979, Chase moved to Paris. When he died of lung cancer in 1989, he was said to have been a favourite to win that year's Nobel Prize in literature, "interrupting the most important literary journey of any writer in the world in the second half of the twentieth century" (Susan Sontag).