JK Rowling, the Harry Potter author, has signed a deal with Little, Brown and Company, to publish her first ever novel for adults, which is set to become one of the most anticipated (期望的) book in years.
The deal means that Rowling’s long-standing relationship with Bloomsbury, the London-based publisher that launched (发行) the Harry Potter books, has come to an end, at least in terms of new works by the author.
Rowling is keeping her fans guessing about the characters and plot of her new book. She only said that the new novel will be nothing like the Harry Potter series, which was sold over 30 million copies in the UK alone. She thought that with the move from children’s to adult fiction, a switch to a new publisher seemed like a natural and reasonable step.
She said, "Although I've enjoyed writing it every bit as much, this book will be very different from the Harry Potter series. The freedom to explore a new field is a gift that Harry’s success has brought me."
Ian Rankin, the Edinburgh-based author whose highly-successful detective novels are also set in the city, suggested Rowling’s book will be a crime novel.
"Wouldn’t it be funny if JK Rowling’s first novel for adults turned out to be a crime story set in Edinburgh?" he said.
Industry insiders guessed that the deal is worth more than £5 million and the new book is expected to come out later this year.
A spokesman said, "JK Rowling’s audience is vast and her position is unique. Harry Potter books were a global success and her fans are very loyal. Children that were eight, nine, or ten when the books first came out in the 1990s are now in their 20s. Plenty of adults, loved the books regardless of whether they had children, so the potential market for her is huge."
【小题1】What does the text mainly tell us?

A.JK Rowling has signed a deal with a new publisher.
B.JK Rowling's new book will be more successful than her Harry Potter series.
C.JK Rowling’s first book for adults will be published later this year.
D.JK Rowling has to switch to a new publisher in order to publish her new book.
【小题2】JK Rowling’s new book for adults       .
A.has been sold 30 million copies in the UK alone
B.is poorly thought of by the London-based publisher Bloomsbury
C.has nothing in common with the Harry Potter series
D.is expected to bring her more money than the Harry Potter series
【小题3】The author used Ian Rankin’s words in order to         .
A.tell us that some famous novelists offer to give Rowling some advice
B.show that many readers are curious about Rowling’s new book
C.tell us that many readers prefer to read detective or crime novels
D.prove that a crime story set in Edinburgh is sure to be successful
【小题4】We can learn from the text that         .
A.Little, Brown and Company is specialized in publishing adult books
B.the author has no doubt about the success of Rowling’s new book
C.JK Rowling will be a crime novelist as good as Ian Rankin
D.it was in Edinburgh that Ian Rankin got to know JK Rowling

Mark Twain has been called the inventor of the American novel. And he surely deserves additional praise: the man who popularized the clever literary attack on racism.

I say clever because anti-slavery fiction had been the important part of the literature in the years before the Civil War. H. B. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is only the most famous example. These early stories dealt directly with slavery. With minor exceptions, Twain planted his attacks on slavery and prejudice into tales that were on the surface about something else entirely. He drew his readers into the argument by drawing them into the story.

Again and again, in the postwar years, Twain seemed forced to deal with the challenge of race. Consider the most controversial, at least today, of Twain’s novels, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Only a few books have been kicked off the shelves as often as Huckleberry Finn, Twain’s most widely read tale. Once upon a time, people hated the book because it struck them as rude. Twain himself wrote that those who banned the book considered the novel “trash and suitable only for the slums (贫民窟).” More recently the book has been attacked because of the character Jim, the escaped slave, and many occurences of the word nigger. (The term Nigger Jim, for which the novel is often severely criticized, never appears in it.)

But the attacks were and are silly—and miss the point. The novel is strongly anti-slavery. Jim’s search through the slave states for the family from whom he has been forcibly parted is heroic. As J. Chadwick has pointed out, the character of Jim was a first in American fiction—a recognition that the slave had two personalities, “the voice of survival within a white slave culture and the voice of the individual: Jim, the father and the man.”

There is much more. Twain’s mystery novel Pudd’nhead Wilson stood as a challenge to the racial beliefs of even many of the liberals of his day. Written at a time when the accepted wisdom held Negroes to be inferior (低等的) to whites, especially in intelligence, Twain’s tale centered in part around two babies switched at birth. A slave gave birth to her master’s baby and, for fear that the child should be sold South, switched him for the master’s baby by his wife. The slave’s lightskinned child was taken to be white and grew up with both the attitudes and the education of the slave-holding class. The master’s wife’s baby was taken for black and grew up with the attitudes and intonations of the slave.

The point was difficult to miss: nurture (养育), not nature, was the key to social status. The features of the black man that provided the stuff of prejudice—manner of speech, for example— were, to Twain, indicative of nothing other than the conditioning that slavery forced on its victims.

Twain’s racial tone was not perfect. One is left uneasy, for example, by the lengthy passage in his autobiography (自传) about how much he loved what were called “nigger shows” in his youth—mostly with white men performing in black-face—and his delight in getting his mother to laugh at them. Yet there is no reason to think Twain saw the shows as representing reality. His frequent attacks on slavery and prejudice suggest his keen awareness that they did not.

Was Twain a racist? Asking the question in the 21st century is as wise as asking the same of Lincoln. If we read the words and attitudes of the past through the “wisdom” of the considered moral judgments of the present, we will find nothing but error. Lincoln, who believed the black man the inferior of the white, fought and won a war to free him. And Twain, raised in a slave state, briefly a soldier, and inventor of Jim, may have done more to anger the nation over racial injustice and awaken its collective conscience than any other novelist in the past century.

1. How do Twain’s novels on slavery differ from Stowe’s?

A.Twain was more willing to deal with racism.

B.Twain’s attack on racism was much less open.

C.Twain’s themes seemed to agree with plots.

D.Twain was openly concerned with racism.

2.Recent criticism of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn arose partly from its ______.

A.target readers at the bottom

B.anti-slavery attitude

C.rather impolite language

D.frequent use of “nigger”

3.What best proves Twain’s anti-slavery stand according to the author?

A.Jim’s search for his family was described in detail.

B.The slave’s voice was first heard in American novels.

C.Jim grew up into a man and a father in the white culture.

D.Twain suspected that the slaves were less intelligent.

4.The story of two babies switched mainly indicates that ______.

A.slaves were forced to give up their babies to their masters

B.slaves’ babies could pick up slave-holders’ way of speaking

C.blacks’ social position was shaped by how they were brought up

D.blacks were born with certain features of prejudice

5.What does the underlined word “they” in Paragraph 7 refer to?

A.The attacks.                            B.Slavery and prejudice.

C.White men.                            D.The shows.

6.What does the author mainly argue for?

A.Twain had done more than his contemporary writers to attack racism.

B.Twain was an admirable figure comparable to Abraham Lincoln.

C.Twain’s works had been banned on unreasonable grounds.

D.Twain’s works should be read from a historical point of view.

 

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