‘The Remains of the Day’ Author Kazuo Ishiguro Wins Nobel Prize for Literature
Kazuo Ishiguro, the Japanese-born British author of novels like “The Remains of the Day,” was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature on Thursday.
In a statement on its website, the Nobel committee said that Kazuo’s work demonstrated “great emotional force” and “has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”
The 62-year-old is perhaps most famous for his 1990 novel “The Remains of the Day”– which was adapted into director James Ivory’s 1993 movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson that collected eight Oscar nominations.
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The book followed a rule-bound butler in pre-World War II Britain whose sense of order is upset by the arrival of a new housekeeper and his employer’s support of Nazi Germany. It also won the prestigious Booker Prize.
Ishiguro first became known for works that explored the subject of repression and self-denial, including his 2005 screenplay for the James Ivory movie “The White Countess.”
In later years, he delved more into genres like sci-fi and fantasy that are not typically recognized by the Nobel committee.
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His 2005 dystopian novel “Never Let Me Go” — adapted into a 2010 movie starring Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield — followed teenagers at a boarding school who realize they’ve been raised as clones whose body parts will be harvested for their genetic matches.
And his most recent novel, 2015’s “The Buried Giant,” explored fantasy tropes such as monsters, knights, swords and sorcery.
“If you mix Jane Austen and Franz Kafka, then you have Kazuo Ishiguro in a nutshell, but you have to add a little bit of Marcel Proust into the mix,” Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said on Thursday. “Then you stir, but not too much, then you have his writings.”
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