Kazuo Ishiguro

The Contemporary British Novel Since 2000

Diaspora, Law and Literature

Identity in Progress : Tracing the Processes of Value Construction in Kazuo Ishiguro's Fiction Why do we believe what we believe in? Where are the values that we take for granted in constructing our identity coming from? Do we know how we came to be the person that is us? Identity in Progress is a book that tries to trace the value construction processes by way of analysing Nobel Prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguros two top novels The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. The former shows an old butler now sceptical about his unshakeable loyalty to whatever he once believed to constitute dignity; the latter shows a young woman on a journey, both literally and metaphorically, to find out who or what she is. With Fredric Jamesons words on the propaedeutic value of art in mind, Identity in Progress provides a refreshing reading of the two novels with a Marxist perspective, revealing, as Jameson says, the historical and social essence of what we believe to be individual experiences.

Kazuo Ishiguro : Contemporary Critical Perspectives Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the finest and most accomplished contemporary writers of his generation. The short story author, television writer and novelist, included twice in Granta's list of Best Young British Writers, has over the past twenty-five years produced a body of work which is just as critically-acclaimed as it is popular with the general public. Like the writings of Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro's work is concerned with creating discursive platforms for issues of class, ethics, ethnicity, nationhood, place, gender and the uses and problems surrounding artistic representation. As a Japanese immigrant who came to Great Britain in 1960, Ishiguro has used his unique position and fine intellectual abilities to contemplate what it means to be British in the contemporary era. This guide traces the main themes throughout Ishiguro's writing whilst it also pays attention to his short stories and writing for television. It includes a new interview with the author, a preface by Haruki Murakami and discussion of James Ivory's adaptation of The Remains of the Day.

Narrative Unreliability in the Twentieth-Century First-Person Novel

Novels for Students

Reading Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go Reading Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go: The Alternative Dystopian Imagination aims to offer innovative perspectives for the analysis of Nobel-prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro's oeuvre through a focus on the genre of science fiction, particularly the novel Never Let Me Go (2005). The study proposes the term "intimate dystopia" to reflect on the passage from totalitarian or external oppressive forces to more "subtle" systems of power. Its interdisciplinary approach combines, apart from literary theory on different genres such as science fiction and memory, race studies, feminism and ecocriticism. It is based on an exhaustive critical and textual analysis that allows for a thorough and nuanced understanding of Ishiguro's multi-layered novel, covering themes such as the ethical dimensions and gender implications of caregiving, the dystopian portrayal of the environment, the significance of art in the existence of marginalized groups and the genre-related complexities of the text.

Revisiting Loss : Memory, Trauma and Nostalgia in the Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro Wojciech Drąg "Loss is the core experience which determines the identity of Kazuo Ishiguro's narrators and shapes their subsequent lives. Whether a traumatic ordeal, an act of social degradation, a failed relationship or a loss of home, the painful event serves as a sharp dividing line between the earlier, meaningful past and the period afterwards, which is infused with a sense of lack, dissatisfaction and nostalgia. Ishiguro's narrators have been unable to confine their loss to the past and remain preoccupied by its legacy, which ranges from suppressed guilt to a keen sense of failure or disappointment. Their immersion in the past finds expression in the narratives which they weave in order to articulate, justify or merely understand their experiences. Their reconstructions of the past are interpreted as exercises in misremembering and self-deception which enable them to sustain their illusions and save them from despair. Revisiting Loss is the first book-length study of memory encompassing Ishiguro's entire novelistic output. It adopts a highly interdisciplinary approach, combining a selection of philosophical (Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, and Jean Starobinski) and psychological perspectives (Sigmund Freud, Frederic Bartlett, Jacques Lacan, and Daniel L. Schacter). The book offers a thoroughly researched critical survey drawing on all published critical monographs and collections of academic articles on Ishiguro's work."

Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro In Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro, Brian W. Shaffer provides a critical survey of the life and work of the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day. One of the most closely followed British writers of his generation, the Japanese-born, English raised and educated Ishiguro is the author of four critically acclaimed novels: A Pale View of the Hills (1982, Winifred Holtby Prize of the Royal Society of Literature), An Artist of the Floating World (1986, Whitbread Book of the Year Award), The Remains of the Day (1988, Booker Prize), and The Unconsoled (1995, Cheltenham Prize). Ishiguro's reputation also extends beyond the world of English language readers as his work has been translated into 27 foreign languages, and The Remains of the Day has been produced as a feature film and nominated for eight Academy Awards.