"The Remains of the Day" and Kazuo Ishiguro's Good Book Series for Beginners

Japanese-born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro (68) is one of the most critically acclaimed English-language authors working today.

In 2017, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, being described as "a writer who, through his emotionally charged novels, has uncovered the abysses beneath the soaring emotions that connect us to the world ."

Portrait of Kazuo Ishiguro (Photo: The Guardian).

Books for beginners

The first two novels, A Pale View of Hills ( 1982) and An Artist of the Floating World ( 1986), both directly address Kazuo Ishiguro's lost Japanese roots. Both works leave readers with something to think about.

Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and moved to England in 1960 at the age of five, not returning to Japan for nearly 30 years.

In addition, the novel The remains of the day ( 1989) is also a starting point for those who are new to reading and learning about Kazuo Ishiguro.

Set in 1950s England, butler Stevens, a man of dignity, recalls his life of service to Lord Darlington. Stevens' misplaced devotion cost him his chance at love, only to realize it too late.

The Remains of the Day is both funny and sad, "both beautiful and cruel", as the writer Salman Rushdie once commented. The work received the Booker Prize for best novel in 1989 and was adapted into a movie in 1993, winning 8 Oscar nominations.

"Gray Hill Scenery" was translated and published by Nha Nam in 2019 (Photo: Nha Nam).

A challenging book

In The Unconsoled ( 1995 ), Ryder, a musician, organizes a concert in a small, unnamed European city. But everything around him changes dramatically.

Compared to Ishiguro's previous three books, this novel has the logic of dreams, in which time, place, and identity constantly change.

The work thoroughly expresses the author's profound awareness: None of us really know where we will go in life.

A strange book

Throughout his career, Ishiguro has been accustomed to writing in familiar genres. But with The Buried Giant , he makes a late but brilliant addition to Arthurian literature.

Set in England around 450 AD, an elderly couple, Axl and Beatrice, embark on a journey to find their long-lost son. After many trials, they enter the land of a female dragon whose breath creates the mist of oblivion.

If the dragon is killed, as the knight Sir Gawain intends, a buried giant will emerge, releasing terrible memories.

Most revealing of all Ishiguro's comments on his work is the blunt statement: "The essence is not in the context."

Post-Nobel Fiction

Ishiguro won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature with a light-hearted acceptance speech published as My Twentieth-Century Evening and Other Small Turning Points. A year later, he was knighted.

Klara and the Sun ( Klara and the Sun ) was published in 2021, is Ishiguro's post-Nobel novel. The narrator is Klara, an artificial person using solar energy, who tries her best for the owner who bought her.

Like all of Ishiguro's work, Klara and the Sun is written in a neutral and light language.

If you only read one book by Kazuo Ishiguro

Never let me go is a science fiction book, revolving around the relationship of 3 friends with events spanning from when they were children to adulthood.

The core question of the work: How do we behave when we know that time is finite and that humans cannot escape the death sentence?

Not at all futuristic or technological, Never Leave Me is set in the past, told in the late 1990s, looking back on the previous decades.

Actresses Keira Knightley and Carey Mulligan in the 2010 film adaptation of "Never Let Me Go" (Photo: Fox Searchlight/Allstar).

Kathy, 31, is a "caretaker" for her clones, destined to become "donors". They are raised for the sole purpose of harvesting their body parts until they die.

Kathy talks about what's important in life, like friendship, love, and disappointments.

Never Leave Me won the Booker Prize in 2005, was rated the best novel of 2005 by Time magazine, and was included in the list of the 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005 selected by this magazine.

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