魔戒迷们有福了！
古人云父承子业，托尔金(J.R.R Tolkien)的儿子克里斯托弗-托尔金（Christopher Tolkien）根据父亲留下来的笔记，编写了一本《胡林的子女》（The Children of Hurin），已经于4月份在英国、美国、加拿大、新西兰同步出版，据英国《经济学人》报道，发售当天出现了排队抢购的景象。
胡林的子女当然不是胡万林的子女。这本书的语言完全是托尔金体，古雅灵动，气势如虹。它跟魔戒最大的不同是一本专门讲故事的小说。而无论是《魔戒三部曲》还是最早出版的《霍比人》都是托尔金的语言实验。实际上，托尔金以前写的小说根本就没打算给读者看，他写小说的初衷是为自己发明的两种人造语言做诠释用的。用托尔金自己的话说，他宁愿用自己发明的Elvish语来写魔戒。
《胡林的子女》的编写工作历时30年，为贯彻托尔金著作的风格，出版商HarperCollins邀请凭《魔戒三部曲：王者再临》获得金像奖最佳美术指导的艺术家Alan Lee，为此书绘画25幅铅笔速写及8幅彩色插图。克里斯托尔金（Christopher Tolken）之前曾根据父亲遗下的资料，完成《The Silmarillion》及《History of Middle Earth》两本著作。
可见父亲太有才也是一项负担，让儿子一生只能做编辑和秘书工作。否则他也许能写出更伟大的作品。
《胡林的子女》（The Children of Hurin），无论谁来翻译成汉语，都是唐突经典，所以有英语能力的魔戒迷最好还是去亚马逊买原版吧。
书商还专门为这本书做了一个预告片，将来会不会拍成电影，要看彼德森有没有兴趣，能不能拉到资金了。
附：《经济学人》的报道
J.R.R. Tolkien
The master’s last wordsApr 19th 2007
From The Economist print editionTHIS week J.R.R. Tolkien reaches us from beyond the grave. Three decades after his death, his son, Christopher Tolkien, has compiled “The Children of Hurin”, gathering his material from subplots in three of Tolkien’s books (including “The Silmarillion” which was also published posthumously) plus notes that the great man jotted down throughout his career.
All the standard fare is here. There is a Dark Lord, a doomed hero and a dragon. Turin and Nienor, Lord Hurin’s children, are born at a time when Men and Elves in Middle Earth are united against Morgoth (a deity gone bad). Hurin is captured in battle and through his defiance of the Dark Lord is cursed and forced to witness the downfall of his family. The story centres on Turin’s inescapable misfortunes as fate drives him to disaster, together with his mother and sister.
This story, based as always on ancient European mythology, is told without poetry, let alone comedy. As the exhaustive introduction and preface make clear, it is all unadorned tragedy. Though the book is quite short, the detail and description are dense. Plot is almost an aside since Turin is destined for awful things from the outset. But the language is authentically Tolkien’s.
Devoted fans of Tolkien’s books, and of the film trilogy made from “The Lord of the Rings”, queued for this final volume when it appeared in the shops this week. They will, no doubt, rejoice in a fresh perspective on a well-known chronicle. But those uneducated in Middle Earth’s rich history and languages may find themselves restlessly page-flipping between the main story and the family trees, glossaries and appendices.
“The Children of Hurin”, unlike Tolkien’s better-known stories, does not set out to be a vehicle for his political and philosophical ideals. Its aim is to tell a good story, and it does so, without wandering into its wider implications. It is well crafted: Christopher Tolkien has skilfully pieced the fragments together to form a “continuous narrative without gaps or interruptions”. The question is whether, given the vast extent of Tolkien’s published work, this new spinning of fragments was really necessary.
Tags: writing