have you met kazuo ishiguro?
The new novel entitled Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is soon to be published.
I originally discovered his writing one lazy summer, whiling away time in the library. The first of his books I read was An Artist of the Floating World, and it is a novel that I highly recommend.
If you have never heard of Kazuo Ishiguro, then here are two reasons that I would recommend reading his books:
1. Sensitivity: One of the key strengths of Ishiguro's narratives is the way he makes the reader share in the sense of loss that his narrator experiences. He deals with the difficult subject of facism and war in his earlier works, and perhaps this is best demonstrated in his best known book the Remains of the Day (which was made into a critically acclaimed film).
2. Culture: It is well known that Ishiguro was born in Japan, and spent much of his life in England. As a result he is able to fuse these two very different cultures in his works. One aspect of the 'Artist' that captivated me was the fact that we see the thoughts of those who lived in World War II who were 'on the other side'. By no means is this an apologists appraoch, but we see the central character delaing with many layers of guilt and introspection. His later books seem to move away from a strictly Japanese setting. However, an interesting study of Japanese culture in an English setting can be found in his debut A Pale View of the Hills.
Never Let Me Go is set to be published on March 3rd.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, February 19, 2005 at 3:36 pm.
