这本书是关于一座城市的传记,这座城市就是安曼。它不是本书作者的传记,尽管在某些篇幅里城市传记和个人传记彼此交错。它也不是小说,因为想象有限,但却借用了一些小说手法,作为该书呈现和架构的方式。这本书企图依靠记忆重现某个地方在某个时期的面貌。记忆这东西无论人如何做到精细和忠实,总免不了欺骗,十足的狡猾,因为所忆之事是根据记忆特有的标准筛选而来的相对重要之事。 This book is a biography of a city called Amman. It is not a biography of the author of this book, although in some parts of the city biographies and personal biographies are intertwined. Nor is it a novel because imagination is limited but borrows some fictional techniques as a way of presenting and structuring the book. The book attempts to rely on memory to recapitulate the appearance of a place at some point. Memories of this matter, no matter how sophisticated and faithful a person can be, can not help but cheat because he recalls something relatively important that is screened out according to the criteria specific to memory.