Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro

This week, we are celebrating our newest Nobel Laureate in Fiction, Kazuo Ishiguro.  In his nearly 35 year career, Ishiguro has written 8 novels, which have been translated into over 40 languages and have won numerous awards, including the Man Booker Prize, and is an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, a title which denotes excellence in contributions to the arts and sciences.  The novelist was praised by the Swedish Academy as a writer "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".

Here are some of Ishiguro's works available at the Glenview Library, as well as some recommended read-a-likes.


The Remains of the Day (1989)



The profoundly compelling portrait of Stevens, the perfect butler, and of his fading, insular world in post-World War II England. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman, " Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness, " and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.

Read-A-Likes:
-The Sense of An Ending by Julian Barnes
-Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbary
-Abdication by Juliet Nicolson
-Atonement by Ian McEwan


Never Let Me Go (2005)



Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it's only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Read-A-Likes:
-Memory of Water by Emmi Itaranta
-Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
-And Again by Jessica Chiarella
-Smoke by Dan Vyleta


The Buried Giant (2015)



A tale of lost memories, vengeance and war, The Buried Giant follows the experiences of a couple who journeys across a troubled land of mist and rain the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.

Read-A-Likes:
-The Mermaid's Child by Jo Baker
-The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
-Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
-The Chimes by Anna Smaill