Kazuo Ishiguro

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Special thanks to laylazharris for recommending Kazuo Ishiguro!


❝Many of our deepest motives come, not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, but out of something that is frozen from childhood.❞

-- Kazuo Ishiguro


Kazuo Ishiguro, in full Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, Japanese-born British novelist known for his lyrical tales of regret fused with subtle optimism. In 2017, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his works that "uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world." He was born on November 8, 1954 in Nagasaki, Japan. His family immigrated to Great Britain in 1960 when he was five years old, later on Ishiguro attended the universities of Kent (B.A., 1978) and East Anglia (M.A., 1980). Within his writing career, Ishiguroexplained in a BBC interview how growing up in a Japanese family in the UK wascrucial to his writing, enabling him to see things from a different perspectiveto that of many of his English peers.

He initially gained literary notice when he contributed three short stories to the anthology Introduction 7: Stories by New Writers (1981). His first novel, A Pale View of Hills (1982), details the postwar memories of Etsuko, a Japanese woman trying to deal with the suicide of her daughter Keiko. Ishiguro continued to write novels such as An Artist of the Floating World (1986), Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day (1989). Also with The Remains of the Day, he became one of the best known European novelists at just 35 years of age. 

It was around the same time, 1986, that he married Lorna MacDougall, a social worker; they met at the West London Cyrenians homelessness charity in Notting Hill, where Ishiguro was working as a residential resettlement worker. The couple lives in London and they have a daughter, Naomi Ishiguro. 

All of his novels are all written in first-person narrative except for The Buried Giant (2015). Some of his novels like Never Let Me Go (2005), which also has science fiction and a futuristic tone even though the setting is set in 1980s and 1990s, in a parallel world. The novel was filmed into a movie in 2010. 

Ishiguro has also wrote screenplays for British television as well as for the feature films The Saddest Music in the World (2003) and The White Countess (2005). He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1995, and he was officially knighted in 2019. Within the past year, he has published a new novel, a dystopian science fiction story called Klara and the Sun (2021). We are thankful and excited to read more of his writings.


Discussion Questions:

If you were to combine two genres, which two genres would you combine to write? Or as a reader, which would you enjoy reading?

Ishiguro enjoys writing in the past to bring up memories. What connects the readers and writer by using this type of method? 

Ishiguro sang solos as a choirboy at church when he was a young boy and also enjoyed writing songs; what's one avenue as a writer or a reader that you enjoy as hobby? How could you expand on the interest? Or would you keep it as a passion to throughly just to enjoy it?


Always open to additional questions and comments on about Kazuo Ishiguro and his works.

If there is another author you would like to see a discussion on, please post your suggestion in the comments below for a chance to be featured in a future chapter!


Resources:

Kazuo Ishiguro Biography

Kazuo Ishiguro Quotes

Kazuo Ishiguro Wikipedia

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