Kazuo Ishiguro
Facts
© Nobel Media AB. Photo: A. Mahmoud
Kazuo Ishiguro
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2017
Born: 8 November 1954, Nagasaki, Japan
Prize motivation: “who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world”
Prize share: 1/1
Life
Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan. When he was five, the family moved to Guildford in Surrey, England, where his father, an oceanographer, had been invited to work at a research institute. In his youth Kazuo Ishiguro first wanted to become a musician, but he studied English and philosophy at the University of Kent and then creative writing at the University of East Anglia, where he earned a master’s degree in 1980. Since then he has worked as a writer. Kazuo Ishiguro is married and has a daughter.
Work
Memory, time and lifelong deception are central themes in Kazuo Ishiguro’s works. Growing up in a Japanese family in Great Britain has colored his thinking and perspectives. His first two novels are set in Japan. His most celebrated work, The Remains of the Day, published in 1989, is about an English butler and his feelings for a housekeeper at the time around World War II. In later works Ishiguro approached genres such as fantasy and science fiction. His language is characterized by restraint, even when dramatic events are portrayed.
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