A dispatch from a foreign land, when crafted by an attentive and skilled writer, can be magical, transmitting pleasure, drama, and seductive strangeness. In The Moon, Come to Earth, Philip Graham offers an expanded edition of a popular series of dispatches originally published on McSweeney’s, an exuberant yet introspective account of a year’s sojourn in Lisbon with his wife and daughter. Casting his attentive gaze on scenes as broad as a citywide arts festival and as small as a single paving stone in a cobbled walk, Graham renders Lisbon from a perspective that varies between wide-eyed and knowing; though he’s unquestionably not a tourist, at the same time he knows he will never be a local. So his lyrical accounts reveal his struggles with (and love of) the Portuguese language, an awkward meeting with Nobel laureate José Saramago, being trapped in a budding soccer riot, and his daughter’s challenging transition to adolescence while attending a Portuguese school—but he also waxes loving about Portugal’s saudade-drenched music, its inventive cuisine, and its vibrant literary culture. And through his humorous, self-deprecating, and wistful explorations, we come to know Graham himself, and his wife and daughter, so that when an unexpected crisis hits his family, we can’t help but ache alongside them. A thoughtful, finely wrought celebration of the moment-to-moment excitement of diving deep into another culture and confronting one’s secret selves, The Moon, Come to Earth is literary travel writing of a rare intimacy and immediacy.

一份来自异国他乡的派遣信，如果由一位细心而熟练的作家来撰写，就会有神奇的效果，传递出快乐、戏剧性和诱人的陌生感。在《月亮，来到地球》中，菲利普-格雷厄姆提供了最初发表在《麦克斯温尼》杂志上的一个受欢迎的派遣系列的扩展版，一个热情洋溢但又内省的关于他与妻子和女儿在里斯本居住一年的记录。格雷厄姆将他专注的目光投向大到全市范围的艺术节，小到鹅卵石路上的一块铺路石的场景，他以一种介于睁大眼睛和了解之间的视角来描绘里斯本；尽管他无疑不是一个游客，但同时他知道他永远不会成为一个当地人。因此，他的抒情叙述揭示了他与葡萄牙语的斗争（和对葡萄牙语的热爱），与诺贝尔奖获得者何塞-萨拉马戈的尴尬会面，被困在萌芽的足球骚乱中，以及他的女儿在葡萄牙学校上学时向青春期的挑战，但他也对葡萄牙的萨德音乐、其创造性的美食和充满活力的文学文化充满了热爱。通过他的幽默、自嘲和怀旧的探索，我们了解了格雷厄姆本人以及他的妻子和女儿，因此，当他的家庭遭遇意外危机时，我们不禁与他们一起痛心。月亮，来到地球》是一部深思熟虑的作品，赞美了深入另一种文化和面对自己的秘密自我时每时每刻的兴奋，是一部具有罕见的亲密性和直接性的文学旅行作品。