Halfway through lunch at the Delaunay, a fashionable European-style brasserie in London, George RR Martin compares the giant slab of breaded chicken on my plate to a map of a fantasy kingdom. The fact that he is one of the world’s biggest-selling fantasy writers, and creator of the books on which the hit television series Game of Thrones is based, makes this a little less surprising than it might otherwise be. But not much. Pointing at my irregularly shaped food with his knife, he elaborates: “There are various little inlets where cities could be,” he says jovially, as if he were making the most obvious comparison in the world.
我們在倫敦的時尚歐式餐廳Delaunay的午餐喫到一半時，喬治•R•R•馬丁(George RR Martin)把我盤中一大塊裹著麪包屑的炸雞比作一張夢幻王國的地圖。他是世界上作品最暢銷的奇幻作家之一，他創作的小說被改編成了熱播電視劇《權力的遊戲》(Game of Thrones)，因此，他作出這樣的比喻並不奇怪。他用餐刀指著我盤中形狀不規則的炸雞塊，解釋道：「上面有各種各樣的小海灣，城市就可能在這裏，」他開心地說，彷彿自己作出了世界上最一目瞭然的比喻。