Kazuo Ishiguro, Nobel Prize in Literature 2017 is a different writer. Or at least it is with respect to the usual trend to grant this award. Of course, after the controversial decision on Bob Dylan in 2016, any determination of an elected is normalized.
El literary universe Kazuo Ishiguro sometimes drink from the science fiction and fantasy. The unusual of these genres rubbing shoulders with others of greater prestige is what arouses the greatest surprise. But it is fair that this type of creative arguments based on scientific hypotheses or fantasies that are born from recognizable environments, and that end up taking an existential look, are finally recognized as good literature.
Science fiction and fantasy project our world. They help us to take perspective of our reality and end up being able to synthesize the human soul, to relocate it in environments without the usual references to seek new behaviors, new ideas beyond the noise of our world, ideologies and moral imperatives. In short, I am satisfied with this Nobel Prize in Literature 2017. And although it is less popular than Bob Dylan's, I see it more just.
As it is also fair to look at the Kazuo Ishiguro bibliography, English citizen of Japanese roots, without limiting his works only to the fantastic (his sample is much broader). So I am going to determine those three readings recommended by me, nothing to do with the criteria for the Nobel Prize 😛 but that can help you in your decision to launch yourself to meet this author.
3 Recommended Novels By Kazuo Ishiguro
Never leave me
At first glance, the youngsters studying at Hailsham boarding school are like any group of teenagers. They play sports, have art classes and discover sex, love and power games.
Hailsham is a mixture of Victorian boarding school and school for children of hippies of the sixties where they keep telling them that they are very special, that they have a mission in the future, and they care about their health. Young people also know that they are sterile and that they will never have children, in the same way that they do not have parents. Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were wards at Hailsham, and they were also a youthful love triangle.
And now, Kathy allows herself to remember Hailsham and how she and her friends slowly discovered the truth. And the reader of this novel, gothic utopia, will discover with Kathy that Hailsham is a representation where young actors do not know that they are only the terrible secret of the good health of a society.
Nocturnes
This book, made up of five stories, is a great recommendation to get started in the Ishiguro world. Five stories about life and time, about the promises of youth, undone by the inertia of a relentless hourglass.
This is the author's first book of stories, it brings together five stories that can be read as studies and variations on a few themes or as a whole concert. In "The Melodic Singer", a professional guitarist recognizes an American vocalist and together they learn a lesson about the different value of the past. In "Come Rain or Come Shine," a manic-depressive is humiliated at the home of an old progressive couple who have passed into the yuppie phase.
The "Malvern Hills" musician guesses his mediocrity when he prepares an album in the shadow of John Elgar. In "Nocturno", a saxophonist meets an old variety artist.
In "Cellists", a young cello prodigy meets a mysterious woman who helps him perfect his technique. The five shuffle elements that are common in the author: the confrontation of the promises of youth and the disappointments of time, the mystery of the other, ambiguous endings without catharsis. And the music, intimately related to the life and work of the author.
The remains of the day
Probably his most critically acclaimed book. Taken to the movies. England, July 1956. Stevens, the narrator, has been the steward of Darlington Hall for thirty years. Lord Darlington died three years ago, and the property is now owned by an American.
The butler, for the first time in his life, will take a trip. His new employer will return for a few weeks to his country, and he has offered the butler his car that was Lord Darlington's for him to enjoy a vacation. And Stevens, in the old, slow, stately car of his masters, will cross England for days to Weymouth, where Mrs. Benn, the former housekeeper of Darlington Hall, lives.
And day by day, Ishiguro will unfold before the reader a perfect novel of lights and chiaroscuro, of masks that barely slide to reveal a reality much more bitter than the friendly landscapes that the butler leaves behind.
Because Stevens finds out that Lord Darlington was a member of the English ruling class who was seduced by fascism and actively plotted for an alliance between England and Germany. And discover, and also the reader, that there is something worse even than having served an unworthy man?
