Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A new edition of the first full-length study of contemporary British writer Kazuo Ishiguro and his works, up to 2005. This book explores his uses of memory and its unreliability in narrative, his manipulations of desire and how humans reinterpret worlds from which they feel estranged. All of his works are eloquent expressions of people struggling with the silence of pain and the awkward stutters of confusion and loss. This book examines his subtle and ironic portrayals of people in 'emotional bereavement' and it situates Ishiguro as an important international novelist by looking at his constructions of personal and political histories. Best known for the Booker Prize-winning and Merchant-Ivory film adaptation of The Remains of the Day, Ishiguro continues his formal experimentation in narrative voice with subsequent work and emphasises the necessary, yet futile, spirit that envelops many of his characters.
Synopsis
In 2017 the Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature to Kazuo Ishiguro, 'who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world'. Cynthia Wong's classic study first appeared in 2000 and is now updated in an expanded
third edition that analyses all of Ishiguro's remarkable novels and one short story collection. From his eloquent trilogy - A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World, and The Remains of the Day - to the astonishing speculative fiction, Never Let Me Go, and the ambitious fable-like story
from pre-Mediaeval times, The Buried Giant, Wong appraises Ishiguro's persistently bold explorations and the narrative perspectives of his troubled characters. A compassionate author, Ishiguro examines the way that human beings reinterpret worlds from which they feel estranged. All of his works are
eloquent expressions of people struggling with the silence of pain and the awkward stutters of confusion and loss. This book analyses his subtle and ironic portrayals of people in 'emotional bereavement' and it situates Ishiguro as an empathetic international writer.