Author
Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-born British novelist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017 and was knighted in 2018.
Profile
Sir Kazuo Ishiguro was born on November 8th, 1954, in Nagasaki, Japan. In 1960 the family migrated to Great Britain. He graduated in English and Philosophy in 1978 from the University of Kent, Canterbury. After a year he joined for his masters in Creative writing in the University of East Anglia. He had Angela Carter and Malcolm Bradbury as his tutors during his post-graduation. His thesis for his post-graduation became his first novel that was published in 1982, ‘A Pale of View of Hills’. He became a British citizen in 1983. Ishiguro married Lorna Mac Dougall in 1986. Ishiguro was into social work and both met during one of the projects. They have a daughter. Ishiguro is a screen-play writer and writes lyrics for songs. He has received many awards, the most prestigious one being the Nobel Prize for Literature for his most famous novel ‘The Remains of the Day’ and the same was awarded Man Booker Prize in 2018. ‘The Remains of the Day’ and “Never Let me Go’ were made into films.
Genre
The words read, when Ishiguro was awarded the Nobel Prize speaks about his works. The Swedish Academy stated that he unearthed ‘the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.’ His work could not be bracketed into any genre as one was different from the other. Ishiguro’s protagonists try to outgrow the void left by the absence of lost family members or loved ones. Acts of remembrance was his style of writing. There was a definite end to his stories but the certain issues of the characters are left unresolved. He has said in many interviews that he was not very familiar with Japanese style of writing. However he agreed that his works reflected the experiences of a person with Japanese values brought up in England.
Popular works by the author
Some of Kazuo Ishiguro’sother popular works of are ‘An Artist of the Floating World’, ‘The Unconsoled’, ‘The Buried Giant’, ‘When we were Orphans’, ‘Come Rain or Come Shine’.