應(yīng)是My Country and My People,中文是《吾國與吾民》或譯《中國人》。
下面是一個native speaker 的review:
This book made headlines in America when it came out in the 1930's. For perhaps the first time a Chinese wrote a book in English about China and the Chinese, and the sympathetic reaction of many Americans to China's plight in the struggle against Japan made this book a bestseller. I still think it is a good book. It sets out in language that is still easy to read the Chinese mind, their history, philosophy, characteristics, etc. A good deal of the descriptions are the author's own opinions, inevitably, but it is a testament to the author's brilliant mind and perceptive eyes that much of the book is still valid today. Indeed, now that war, revolution, and communism are things of the past, the Chinese are reverting more and more to their old ways, both good and bad, and their old ways are what this book is about.
Pearl Buck, the first American woman to win the Nobel Literature Prize, was the one who persuaded Lin to write this book. Her faith in him is fully justified. Few indeed were native sons of China who were immersed in both Chinese and Western cultures. And Lin was one.
Given my interest in both Lin Yutang and JRR Tolkien, I cannot resist a comparison. There is no evidence that Lin and Tolkien knew each other, although both were philologists (linguists interested in the historical origins of words) living in the same period.
Their specialties were quite different, however. Tolkien was an expert in Old English, and was comfortable in many northern European languages, both old and modern. (He could even read Finnish!) Lin's expertise was in Chinese literature from the classical period, and what made him unique at the time was his almost native fluency in English (as well as in German, plus a couple of modern European languages).
They were born three years apart (Tolkien in 1892, Lin in 1895) and they died exactly three years apart, at the same age (81).
—— 天外大衛(wèi)
