Staff Pick
A sometimes quiet, sometimes tense quest novel, The Buried Giant weaves the pastoral with the magical. An elderly couple start a journey to visit the son they haven't seen in years. Anticipating an easy trip, they soon become entangled with a warrior, a knight, and a sleeping dragon, not to mention pixies and slightly sinister boatmen. Not just a fantasy story, Ishiguro's novel has much to say about marriage, trust, memory, and love. With a nod to Charlie Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Ishiguro asks whether or not, if possible, we would choose to keep our painful memories. Do they make us who we are? Do they change us into other people? Before they know it, the elderly couple realizes the choice they make about memory will affect their entire world. Sweet, and bittersweet as well, The Buried Giant is an unexpected story from a literary giant. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
KAZUO ISHIGURO was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of 5. He is the author of 6 novels: A Pale View of Hills (1982, Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize), An Artist of the Floating World (1986, Whitbread Book of the Year Award, Premio Scanno, shortlisted for the Booker Prize), The Remains of the Day (1989, winner of the Booker Prize), The Unconsoled (1995, winner of the Cheltenham Prize), When We Were Orphans (2000, shortlisted for the Booker Prize) and Never Let Me Go (2005, Corine Internationaler Buchpreis, Serono Literary Prize, Casino de Santiago European Novel Award, shortlisted for the Booker Prize). Nocturnes (2009), his connected stories collection, was awarded the Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa International Literary Prize. In 1995 Ishiguro received an OBE for Services to Literature and in 1998 the French decoration of Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Synopsis
The extraordinary new novel from the author ofNever Let Me Goand the Booker Prize winningThe Remains of the Day
The Romans have long since departed, and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. But at least the wars that once ravaged the country have ceased.
The Buried Giant begins as a couple, Axl and Beatrice, set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen for years. They expect to face many hazards some strange and other-worldly but they cannot yet foresee how their journey will reveal to them dark and forgotten corners of their love for one another.
Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro s first novel in a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge and war.
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