高二英语拓展卷

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　　I am reading a novel at the moment，a story set in Britain and India in the 19th century．It was written by an Indian author who now lives in Denmark，but neither in the language of Hindi nor Danish．Although the paperback edition I'm holding was published in New Delhi，India，four years ago，I(an American)purchased it recently from a second-hand bookshop in Tokyo，Japan．

　　That's quite a history already．But there's more．

　　The novel is a tale of various mysteries，all expertly put into a well-structured story by a very，skillful author．Yet my particular copy presents even more mysteries than the tale．

　　One summer morning in the year of my paperback's publication-on July 15，2012-someone else was reading it while eating breakfast in a restaurant in Mumbai，India．

　　I know this because I found a receipt(收据)of coffee and bread inside．I also know that this person was not the owner of the paperback immediately before me．

　　In fact，the owner before me was not Indian at all，but Japanese．

　　I know this because in the book there are handwritten notes in Japanese-translations of English words which the reader was unfamiliar．Japanese being a language of characters，not letter，it is not easy to determine if the note writer was a man or a woman．But the care taken to write the translations neatly in the limited spaces available on each page bespeaks a woman's hand．

So let us agree that it is a woman．What can we say of her? Well educated，obviously，and probably a university student，who would keep a dictionary at hand while reading a novel．