2017 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Kazuo Ishiguro on his novels of 'great emotional force'
Kazuo Ishiguro has won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Japanese-born British author was acknowledged for being a writer "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world."
Born in Nagasaki, he moved to England with his family when he was five years old. His passion in university was rock music, and he says that it's only because he didn't make it as a singer and guitarist that he turned his hand to writing. He met with success right from his very first novel, A Pale View of Hills, published when he was just 27. His third novel, The Remains of the Day, catapulted him to the international stage — it won the 1989 Booker Prize and was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film.
His 2005 novel Never Let Me Go was named by Time as one of the 100 greatest English-language novels since the inception of the magazine. His most recent novel is 2015's The Buried Giant. He has also written screenplays and short fiction.
In 2015, Ishiguro spoke with Eleanor Wachtel about The Buried Giant, which you can listen to above.
He has also been on Writers & Company twice before: in 1995 he discussed The Unconsoled and in 2000 he discussed When We Were Orphans. You can listen to those conversations below.
Of his experience, he said: "Eleanor Wachtel is one of the very finest interviewers of authors I've come across anywhere in the world."