A Bible salesman lures a one-legged philosopher into a barn.

一位販賣聖經的業務員誘拐一位獨腳的的哲學家到一個穀倉裡。

A traveling handyman teaches a deaf woman her first word on an old plantation.

一位四處旅行的雜工在大農場上教導一位耳聾的婦人她的第一個字。

From her farm in rural Georgia, surrounded by a flock of pet birds, Flannery O'Connor scribbled tales of outcasts, intruders and misfits staged in the world she knew best: the American South.

在她位於喬治亞州鄉村間被一群家禽環繞的農場，弗蘭納里·奧康納速寫了許多有關被拋棄的人、入侵者及不適應環境的人如何融入她最熟悉的世界：美國南方的故事。

She published two novels, but is perhaps best known for her short stories, which explored small-town life with stinging language, offbeat humor, and delightfully unsavory scenarios.

她出版了兩本小說，但她最為人知的也許是她以尖酸的筆觸、不跟隨主流的幽默及令人厭惡卻討喜的場景探索小鎮生活的短篇故事。

In her spare time O'Connor drew cartoons, and her writing is also brimming with caricature.

在她的空閒時間，奧康納畫了許多諷刺畫，而她的筆觸也充滿諷刺的意味。

In her stories, a mother has a face "as broad and innocent as a cabbage," a man has as much drive as a "floor mop," and one woman's body is shaped like "a funeral urn."

在她的故事中，可以看見一位有著一張「和高麗菜一樣寬、一樣無害的臉」的母親、一位「和地板拖把一樣有動力」的男人及一位身型像「骨灰甕」的女人。

The names of her characters are equally sly.

她筆下的人物名也一樣充滿玄機。

Take the story "The Life You Save May be Your Own," where the one-handed drifter Tom Shiftlet wanders into the lives of an old woman named Lucynell Crater and her deaf and mute daughter.

以《你所拯救的生命可能是自己的生命》這個故事為例，只有一隻手的流浪漢湯姆•遜弗雷漫步入一位叫露西奈爾•卡特的老婦人及她又聾又啞的女兒的生活中。

Though Mrs. Crater is self-assured, her isolated home is falling apart.

雖然卡特小姐很有自信，她遺世獨立的房子卻正慢慢瓦解。

At first, we may be suspicious of Shiftlet's motives when he offers to help around the house, but O'Connor soon reveals the old woman to be just as scheming as her unexpected guest, and rattles the reader's presumptions about who has the upper hand.

起初，我們也許會對遜弗雷幫忙家務的動機感到懷疑，但奧康納很快地揭曉那位老婦人也和她不期而遇的訪客一樣狡詐，攪和讀者對誰占上風的推測。

For O'Connor, no subject was off limits.

對奧康納來說，沒有不可以寫的題材。

Though she was a devout Catholic, she wasn't afraid to explore the possibility of pious thought and unpious behavior co-existing in the same person.

雖然她是一位虔誠的天主教徒，她並不害怕探索同時存在於同一個人身上的虔誠思想和褻瀆行為的可能。

In her novel "The Violent Bear it Away," the main character grapples with the choice to become a man of God, but also sets fires and commits murder.

在她的小說《暴力奪取》中，主角掙扎著努力成為神職人員的選擇，卻也到處放火及殺人。

The book opens with the reluctant prophet in a particularly compromising position: "Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave.”

這本書以一個有著極其有損體面的情境令人厭惡的預言中展開：「那位男孩喝太醉以至於無法挖完法西斯•瑪麗安•沓爾瓦特的舅舅的墳墓，在他只死了半天之時。」

This leaves a passerby to "drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it with enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.”

這使一位行人把屍體從一張它仍被放置的早餐桌上拖走，並用足夠的泥土埋葬它以防止狗將它挖出來。

Though her own politics are still debated, O'Connor's fiction could also be attuned to the racism of the South.

雖然她自己的政治見解仍待商榷，奧康納的小說可以讓人們更加理解南方的種族主義。

In "Everything that Rises Must Converge," she depicts a son raging at his mother's bigotry.

在《凡興者必合》中，她描述了一位對其母親的偏執咆嘯的兒子。

But the story reveals that he has his own blind spots and suggests that simply recognizing evil doesn't exempt his character from scrutiny.

但這個故事也揭露他其實有著他自己的盲點，並暗示著純粹地辨別邪惡並不能讓他自己免於被檢視。

Even as O'Connor probes the most unsavory aspects of humanity, she leaves the door to redemption open a crack.

即使奧康納探究人性最黑暗的一面，她仍留了一扇通往救贖的門。

In "A Good Man is Hard to Find," she redeems an insufferable grandmother for forgiving a hardened criminal, even as he closes in on her family.

在《好男人難遇》中，她挽回了一位令人無法忍受的奶奶的形象，這位老奶奶原諒了一位慣犯，即使他漸漸包圍她的家人。

Though we might balk at the price the woman pays for this redemption, we're forced to confront the nuance in moments we might otherwise consider purely violent or evil.

雖然我們可能會對這位婦人為這救贖所付出的代價感到無法接受，我們仍被迫面對我們一開始認為只是暴力或邪惡，但其實可能不是，存在在這之中的細微差異。

O'Connor's mastery of the grotesque and her explorations of the insularity and superstition of the South led her to be classified as a Southern Gothic writer.

奧康納對怪誕事物的掌控、孤立的探尋和南方迷信讓她被分類成南方哥德式作家。

But her work pushed beyond the purely ridiculous and frightening characteristics associated with the genre to reveal the variety and nuance of human character.

但她的作品不僅僅只具有這類文類中探討純粹荒誕和駭人特質，藉以揭露人們多樣及具些微差異的個性的元素。

She knew some of this variety was uncomfortable, and that her stories could be an acquired taste, but she took pleasure in challenging her readers.

她深知這多樣性的其中一些部分並不那麼讓人感到舒適，而她的故事一開始可能也不這麼討喜，但她卻樂於挑戰她的讀者。

O'Connor died of lupus at the age of 39, after the disease had mostly confined her to her farm in Georgia for twelve years.

奧康納在三十九歲時死於狼瘡，在她與這將她囚禁在喬治亞州農場的病魔纏鬥了十二年之後。

During those years, she penned much of her most imaginative work.

在那些年間，她寫了許多她最富有想像力的作品。

Her ability to flit between revulsion and revelation continues to draw readers to her endlessly surprising fictional worlds.

她能在厭惡和揭發真相的筆觸間移動自如的能力，持續吸引讀者閱讀她充滿驚奇的虛構小說。

As her character Tom Shiftlet notes, the body is "like a house: it don't go anywhere, but the spirit, lady, is like an automobile: always on the move.

就像她筆下的人物湯姆•遜弗雷所說「軀體就像一棟房子，它不會移動了，然而她的靈魂，女士，就像是一輛汽車般永遠馳騁著。」