After a decades-long wave of blockbuster novels about wizards, vampires and dystopias, the latest trend in children's literature is surprisingly old. Historical fiction about World War II is having a renaissance.

巫師、吸血鬼和反烏托邦的暢銷小說大行其道數十年後，兒童文學的最新趨勢是令人吃驚的老題材。二次大戰的歷史小說正掀起一場文藝復興。

"We're seeing more publishing on it than we ever have before," said David Levithan, the vice president and publisher of Scholastic, noting that this is a topic "that across the board is popular with kids of all ages."

"It's a story with unambiguous good guys and bad guys," he said.

「學術」出版社副總裁兼發行人大衛．李文森說：「我們看到這個題材的出版量多到前所未見。」他說，這個題材「大小通吃，受到所有年齡孩子的喜愛。」

他說：「這是好人、壞人黑白分明的故事。」

This year, Scholastic is publishing seven middle-grade and young-adult novels set in the period, including Alan Gratz's "Projekt 1065," about a boy who joined the Hitler Youth as a spy, and "The Darkest Hour," Caroline Tung Richmond's novel about a teenage spy in France.

World War II has always captivated readers, and authors and publishers say the subject has the rare potential to draw men and women as well as young and old readers to a single title.

今年，「學術」準備出版7本給8到12歲和13到18歲讀者看的小說，背景都是二戰時期，包括艾倫．葛拉茲的《1065計畫》，描繪一名男孩以間諜身分混入「希特勒青年團」，而卡洛琳．唐恩．里奇蒙的小說《最黑暗的時刻》，是法國一名青少年間諜的故事。

二戰題材一向能抓住讀者，作家和出版商說，這個題材具有非常難得的潛力，能讓同一本書男女老少皆宜。

"World War II really opens up the market," said novelist Kristin Hannah, whose 2015 novel, "The Nightingale," about women in the French Resistance, has sold more than 2 million copies.

World War II stories may hold a special appeal because this was a conflict that young people got swept up in — as refugees, Resistance fighters and youth soldiers — as dire circumstances forced them to behave like adults.

小說家克麗絲汀．漢娜說：「二戰真的打開了市場。」她2015年出版的小說《夜鶯》，敘述法國反納粹地下組織「法國抵抗運動」女性的故事，銷售超過2百萬冊。

二戰故事可能還有一種特別吸引力，因為它是年輕人也被捲入的一場衝突─變身難民、抵抗運動鬥士、少年兵，危殆的形勢迫使他們必須表現得像大人。

When Monica Hesse was 11, her father gave her a copy of "Hitler's Willing Executioners."

Most preteens would have blanched at getting a more-than-600-page book about the Holocaust as a present. Hesse, who had read "The Diary Of Anne Frank" over and over, was riveted by it.

莫妮卡．海斯11歲時，父親給了她一本《希特勒心甘樂意的劊子手》。

多數青春期前的小孩拿到的禮物是本厚達600多頁，談納粹大屠殺的書籍，可能嚇得臉色發白。但對《安妮的日記》百讀不厭的海斯，被它深深吸引。

"My parents knew that was what I was interested in," said Hesse, 34, a feature writer for The Washington Post.

Now Hesse is hoping to hook other young readers on World War II stories with her young-adult novel, "Girl in the Blue Coat," about a teenage girl in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam who joins the underground student resistance movement.

海斯現年34歲，為華盛頓郵報撰寫特稿，她說：「我的父母知道那是我感興趣的東西。」

現在海斯希望能以她寫給13到18歲讀者的小說《藍外套女孩》吸引其他年輕讀者閱讀二戰故事，該書描述納粹占領下阿姆斯特丹一名十來歲少女，最後加入了學生地下抵抗運動。

This novel's young heroine, Hanneke, sells goods on the black market to support her family. She reluctantly agrees to help one of her customers find Mirjam, a Jewish girl who was hiding in a friend's pantry, then mysteriously disappeared. Hanneke's search for Mirjam forces her to confront her own apathy and ignorance about the atrocities that have been taking place around her.

小說的年輕女主角漢妮克在黑市販賣商品以維持家人生計。她勉強同意幫一位客人尋找猶太女孩米莉安的下落，米莉安躲進朋友的食品儲藏室，後來神秘失蹤。漢妮克尋找米莉安時，被迫面對自己對發生在周遭暴行的冷漠和無知。

With their wraparound sunglasses and easy smiles, the Nepalese contractors who guarded the Canadian Embassy had become respected fixtures in Kabul, part of a larger community of South Asian security guards who stood sentry at foreign missions all around the capital.

Driven to work in Afghanistan by collapsed economic prospects back home, the contractors were able to send desperately needed money back to their families. But nothing here is without risk.

戴著全罩式太陽眼鏡，面帶和善的笑容，守衛加拿大大使館的尼泊爾外包人員，已成為喀布爾受到尊重的固定特色，他們是在首都各外國使館站衛兵、人數更龐大的南亞安全警衛的一部分。

這些外包人員因國內經濟前景崩壞而前往阿富汗工作，他們能寄錢回國給極需要的家人。但這裡可是危機四伏。

Last month, a Taliban suicide bomber killed 15 men, 13 Nepalese and two Indian contractors who helped secure the embassy, striking the guards' commuter bus just after it had picked them up at their residence compound. It was one of the deadliest attacks on foreign workers in the capital — and another example of how the South Asian contractors who have become mainstays in places like Afghanistan and Iraq are vulnerable in ways that many of their Western counterparts are not.

上個月，一名神學士自殺炸彈客炸死15名男士，他們是維護大使館安全的13名尼泊爾和2名印度外包人員，警衛的通勤巴士從他們居住的營區接他們上車後不久即被炸。這是針對首都外國工作人員死傷最重的攻擊之一，也是已成為阿富汗和伊拉克等地中流砥柱的南亞外包人員多麼易受攻擊的另一例證，而許多西方的外包人員不會如此受到攻擊。

Many of the Nepalese guards had worked for months just to recover the thousands of dollars in broker fees they had paid to secure jobs in Afghanistan. One of the guards, Prem Bahadur Tamang, 38, said that they enjoyed fewer privileges in their barracks than their "white brothers." He added that among other restrictions, for instance, they were prevented from leaving their compound to go to a store.

許多尼泊爾警衛已工作好些個月，卻只能賺回為了在阿富汗有工作而付給仲介的數千美元。其中一名警衛，38歲的普萊姆．巴哈杜爾．塔曼說，他們在營區享有的福利比不上「白人兄弟」。他接著說，例如，諸多限制之一是他們不准離開營區去商店。

And they were shuttled around Kabul in ordinary minibuses, not in the armored cars that protect many Western contractors.

Tamang said he had worked for the company for five years but abruptly returned home after the attack last month — with barely any of his clothes, saying he was still owed 20 days of wages. Other colleagues in Kabul were also considering going back to Nepal, he added.

而且他們乘坐一般的迷你巴士在喀布爾穿梭，而不是保護許多西方外包人員的裝甲汽車。

塔曼說，他已為這家公司工作5年，但在上月的攻擊後突然返家，連衣服都沒帶，他說，他還有20天的薪水沒領。他接著說，其他在喀布爾的同事也考慮回尼泊爾。

It was not an easy choice, he said, after desperation had driven many of them to Afghanistan in the first place. "We have no job opportunities in Nepal," Tamang said, adding that he had paid a broker the equivalent of about $3,300 to get to Kabul, where he was paid $950 a month — a fraction of the salaries paid to Western security contractors.

Some of the Nepalese guards hoped to build a house. Others, like Tamang, were trying to rebuild their lives after Nepal's devastating earthquake last year.

這不是容易的選擇，他說，畢竟當初他們之中許多人是走投無路才去阿富汗。塔曼說，「我們在尼泊爾沒有工作機會」，並說，為了去喀布爾，他已付給一名仲介相當於3300美元，他在喀布爾每月領950美元，只是西方外包保全人員的幾分之一。

有些尼泊爾警衛希望能蓋棟房子。其他人，像塔曼這樣，則正努力在去年尼泊爾毀滅性的地震後重建生活。