The winner of 2017’s Nobel Prize in Literature was announced just two hours ago. This year Kazuo Ishiguro is taking home the prize. What a great choice by the academy, but we’ve all got our opinions, right? He’s no stranger to accolades, but this prize might be the most meaningful. Do you think he deserves it?
Here is a quick list of his novels. He’s also written short fiction and screenplays.
- A Pale View of Hills (1982)
- An Artist of the Floating World (1986)
- The Remains of the Day (1989)
- The Unconsoled (1995)
- When We Were Orphans (2000)
- Never Let Me Go (2005)
- The Buried Giant (2015)
Let me know what you think! Does he deserve the prize? Are you familiar with his work? What is your favorite novel of his? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this year’s winner. Please comment below or head over to Facebook and let us know.
Hi Jessica, I am not familiar with much of his work. I have only read the post-apocalyptic “A Village After Dark” and watched “The Remains of the Day” very British. From what I can gather Ishiguro´s work is valued for its sense of integrity and subtlety. As viewers, a certain pathos, characters with flaws and in Japanese mono no aware that is protagonists who are accepting of their past and of who they have become. He is a British citizen but his parents are Japanese. Surprisingly perhaps He writes Historical fiction and Science fiction. He also writes lyrics for a Jazz musician Stacey Kent. He is an OBE and has won both the Whitbread and Booker Prizes. I like the fact that he said in the future the world will be a more homogeneous mixture of cultural backgrounds/families.
We will still be hoping for Haruki´s moment. Mr Murakami has developed his own genre and cult following, he deserves that Nobel prize in Lit.
I’ve only read The Buried Giant, which I was a bit disappointed in. My wife swears by Remains of the Day, though. So I may dive into Ishiguro again at some point.
It’s funny. Quite by accident I read Never Let Me Go just before Ishiguro won the prize. I was researching book/film pairs that would be a good fit for non-native speakers of English…but when I read the book and watched the film I was so struck by the depth of the writing. On the surface the story and the prose are rather simple (don’t get me wrong, it’s a page-turner). Although I read the book in 24 hours, I am thinking about it still!!! It reminded me of the existentialists a bit. The importance of mortality, the importance of creating art. Did I read into it or was there a bit of the absurd there too??? And then all the questions we could ask–about how our culture, our society traps us, tricks us into playing a role instead of doing what is right… And the psychology–the children learning about their strange purpose in life in the same lecture where they learn about sex, and only wanting to know so much. Leaving much unsaid and unasked. Who deserves the Nobel Prize? I have no idea. But I’ll be reading more of Ishiguro. Oh, and watch the movie too.