The Gargoyle

　　他，是一位憤世嫉俗的都會美型男，事業得意但生活空虛。一日，他因車禍而嚴重燒傷，在忍受無數痛苦的治療時，卻一心想著如何執行精心策畫的自殺秀，只因他的外表與靈魂都已成為可怕的怪物。

　　此時，生命中卻出現一位美麗的意外訪客。身為石像怪獸雕刻家的瑪麗安娜堅稱他們曾是中世紀的戀人。她以「天方夜譚」的方式述說著他們的前世與過往、但丁的《地獄》，還有一些雋永的愛情故事。於是，他開始期待她的陪伴，也對生命重燃信心，並墜入了愛河，不料……

媒體名人狂熱推薦的注目大作，浪漫、幽默、黑暗、聰明得令你感動！

An extraordinary debut novel of love that survives the fires of hell and transcends the boundaries of time

　　The narrator of The Gargoyle is a very contemporary cynic, physically beautiful and sexually adept, who dwells in the moral vacuum that is modern life. As the book opens, he is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over much of his body. As he recovers in a burn ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned, he awaits the day when he can leave the hospital and commit carefully planned suicide—for he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul.

　　A beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health. As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England, he finds himself drawn back to life—and, finally, in love. He is released into Marianne’s care and takes up residence in her huge stone house. But all is not well. For one thing, the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another, Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to complete—and her time on earth will be finished.

作者簡介

安德魯．戴維森（Andrew Davidson）

　　出生於加拿大曼尼托巴省的皮納瓦市，一九九五年畢業於加拿大的英屬哥倫比亞大學英文文學系。他曾在日本擔任英文教師，斷斷續續在日本住過幾年，也曾為日本的網站編寫英語課程。戴維森現居於加拿大曼尼托巴省的溫尼伯市。

　　處女作《石像怪獸》是他長達七年構思與鑽研的作品，初試啼聲便躍登《紐約時報》《出版人週刊》《加拿大書商協會》各大暢銷榜！引起《紐約時報》《華爾街日報》《華盛頓郵報》《出版人週刊》《娛樂週刊》《紐約新聞》《今日美國》等各大媒體大篇幅報導關注。

　　ANDREW DAVIDSON was born in Pinawa, Manitoba, and graduated in 1995 from the University of British Columbia with a B.A. in English literature. He has worked as a teacher in Japan, where he has lived on and off, and as a writer of English lessons for Japanese Web sites. The Gargoyle, the product of seven years' worth of research and composition, is his first book. Davidson lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.