Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki in 1954 and moved to England at the age of five — a biographical fact that has given him a relationship to both cultures characterised by distance, by the looking-back of the emigrant, and by a profound understanding of how memory shapes and distorts what we think we know. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017 for what the Swedish Academy described as novels that "uncov[er] the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world."

His first two novels, A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World, established themes of memory, regret, and self-deception that would recur across his career. The Remains of the Day (1989), which won the Booker Prize, is his most celebrated work — narrated by an English butler of impeccable professional dignity who is slowly, devastatingly forced to reckon with what he sacrificed for duty. Never Let Me Go (2005) and The Buried Giant (2015) have extended his range into speculative territory without sacrificing his essential concerns. He is among the most accomplished novelists alive.