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A man wakes to find himself transformed.[qh]
一个人醒来，发现自己变了样。[qh]
He looks around, seeking his bearings as he tries to come to terms with what has happened to him overnight, perhaps after uneasy dreams.[qh]
他环顾四周，寻找自己的方向，试图接受一夜之间发生在他身上的事情，也许是在做了不安的梦之后。[qh]
He looks at his hand, which he knows like … well, like the back of his hand. [qh]
他看着自己的手，他知道这就像……嗯，就像他的手背。[qh]
It is unfamiliar, the hand of another.[qh]
这是陌生的手，别人的手。[qh]
He seeks out his reflection. The man who looks back at him is a stranger.[qh]
他寻找自己的倒影。回头看他的人是个陌生人。[qh]
These are the opening beats of Mohsin Hamid’s latest novel, The Last White Man: “One morning Anders, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown.” [qh]
以下是莫辛·哈米德最新小说《最后一个白人》的开篇:“一天早上，白人安德斯醒来，发现自己的肤色已经变成了无可否认的深棕色。”[qh]
These are also the opening beats—albeit about a black man who wakes up white—of A. Igoni Barrett’s Blackass (2015), the epigraph of which cites Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” to make the debt explicit. [qh]
这些也是伊戈尼·巴雷特《黑腚》(2015)的开篇--尽管讲的是一个黑人醒来后变成白人的故事，这部作品的题词引用了卡夫卡的《变形记》来清楚地表达人情债。[qh]
It’s also the premise of a chapter of Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country (2016) about a black woman who wakes up white, which, per its title, “Jekyll in Hyde Park,” alludes to Robert Louis Stevenson’s scene from 1886: “The hand of Henry Jekyll … large, firm, white, and comely” appears “in the yellow light of a mid-London morning, lying half shut on the bed-clothes … lean, corded, knuckly, of a dusky pallor and thickly shaded with a swart growth of hair.”[qh]
这也是马特·拉夫的《恶魔之地》(2016)中有一章的前言，讲的是一个黑人女性醒来时变成了白人，这一章的标题是《海德公园里的杰基尔》，暗指罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森在1886年的场景:“亨利·杰基尔的手……宽大、结实、白皙、标致”出现在“伦敦中部的晨曦中，他的手半合在被单上……瘦削、紧致、指节分明，柔和白皙，被浓密的毛发遮蔽着。”[qh]
Perhaps Hamid is hoping to make good on a saying from his first novel, Moth Smoke (2000): “Tales with unoriginal beginnings are those most likely later to surprise.”[qh]
也许哈米德是希望兑现他的第一部小说《蛾烟》(2000)中的一句话:“非原创的故事开头是最有可能在之后给人带来惊喜的。”[qh]
Like the hero of Herman Raucher’s novelization of Watermelon Man (1970), Anders’s first impulse is to mistake himself for a dark-skinned home intruder.[qh]
就像赫尔曼·劳彻小说《西瓜人》(1970)中的主人公一样，安德斯的第一反应是把自己误认为是一个黑皮肤的闯入者。[qh]
Like the hero of Harry Stephen Keeler’s The Man Who Changed His Skin (1959), Anders soon realizes this isn’t just a tan, either: “He looked like another person, not just another person, but a different kind of person, utterly different.”[qh]
就像哈利·斯蒂芬·基勒的《贩肤走卒》(1959)中的男主角一样，安德斯很快意识到这不仅仅是晒黑了:“他看起来像另一个人，不仅仅是另一个人，而是另一种人，完全不同了。”[qh]
Like the hero of Mortimer Weisinger’s pulp story, “Pigments Is Pigments” (1935), Anders reacts with shock at his darkening, then falls into a “murderous rage.”[qh]
就像莫蒂默·魏辛格的劣质小说《颜料就是颜料》(1935)中的主人公一样，安德斯对自己变黑的反应是震惊，然后是“怒不可遏”。[qh]
As with the more scientifically minded versions of this plot, like Jess Row’s Your Face in Mine (2014) and Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s We Cast a Shadow (2019), we’ll soon find out whether the transformation is explicable or reversible. [qh]
就像杰斯·罗的《你的脸在我身上》(2014年)和莫里斯·卡洛斯·鲁芬的《我们投下阴影》(2019年)等更科学的小说一样，我们很快就会知道这种转变是可以解释的还是可逆的。[qh]
We’ll discover whether it afflicts just Anders or spreads to others like a fad, as in George S. Schuyler’s Black No More (1931), or like a plague, as in Junot Díaz’s story “Monstro” (2012).[qh]
我们会发现，变换肤色是只折磨安德斯一人，还是像乔治·舒勒的《黑色不再》(1931)那样像时尚一样传播给他人，还是像朱诺·迪亚斯的故事《怪物》(2012)那样像瘟疫一样传播给他人。[qh]
