The Stolen Child

　　如果有人偷走你的人生，你要怎麼辦？

　　男孩亨利‧戴在七歲時負氣離家出走，被蟄居森林中的妖精綁架。假扮他的妖精隨著協助尋人的消防隊員回家，從此展開新生活。他必須適應新父母，隱藏自己的真實身份，還得不時捏塑身體跟上歲月的腳步，因為妖精永遠不會長大。

　　而那個被妖精抓走的男孩呢？他歷經溺斃而後救活的儀式，重生為妖精，從此告別文明，甚至連書寫和原本的語言都不再熟悉。妖精喚他作「Ａ一袋」，這群「野孩子」徜徉於森林裡，仰望夜空星子，與群獸嬉戲，然而文明的腳步不斷逼近，很快就要危及妖精的林中家園……

　　故事以妖精和男孩的觀點交互進行，他們的生命幾度交會，但都擦身而過。當假亨利的罪惡感達到極限，瀕臨崩潰邊緣，他該如何得到救贖？而當林間妖精死傷四散，「Ａ一袋」會選擇原諒，還是毀掉那個偷走他一生的妖精？

★本書中譯本《失竊的孩子》由遠流出版

作者簡介

凱斯．唐納修Keith Donohue

　　出生於一個愛爾蘭裔的美國家庭，是七個小孩的中間那個，從小就覺得自己可能是個偷換兒。第一個工作是在National Endowment擔任主席的文書助理，長達八年，利用課餘取得文學博士學位，論文是關於愛爾蘭現代文學。

　　1974年立志以寫作為業，《失竊的孩子》是他的第一本書，他目前正在撰寫一本以美洲神話為背景的小說。

　　THE STOLEN CHILD is the story of Henry Day, a seven-year-old kidnapped by a strange group living in the dark forest near his home. He is stolen by changelings--ageless beings whose secret community is threatened by encroaching modern life. They give Henry a new name, Aniday, and the gift of agelessness--now and forever, he will be seven years old. In keeping with tradition, the group has left another child in Henry’s place. This changeling boy, who has morphed himself into Henry’s duplicate, must adjust to a completely new way of life and hide his true identity from the Day family. But he can’t hide his extraordinary talent for the piano (a skill the real Henry never displayed), and his near-perfect performances prompt his father to suspect that the son he has raised is an imposter. As he grows older the new Henry Day becomes haunted by vague but persistent memories of life in another time and place, of a German piano teacher and his prodigy. Both Henry and Aniday search obsessively for who they were before they changed places in the world.

　　Narrated in the alternating voices of Henry Day and his double, THE STOLEN CHILD is a classic tale of the search for identity and leaving childhood. With just the right mix of fantasy and realism, Keith Donohue creates a literary fable of remarkable depth and strange delights. The result is a bedtime story for adults, which will appeal to readers charmed and captivated by such recent bestsellers as Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and The Confessions of Max Tivoli and by the classics of Tolkien and J. M. Barrie.