Ishiguro wins literature Nobel
The popular English author Kazuo Ishiguro, best known for the 1989 novel “The Remains of the Day,” has won the Nobel Prize in literature.
Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, “The Remains of the Day” was adapted into the 1993 film starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. The story is narrated by a devoted and repressed butler who looks back on his career in an English manor and his relationship with a housekeeper.
In announcing the $1.1 million prize on Thursday, Oct. 5, the Swedish Academy praised the author “who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”
Ishiguro’s other works include the 2005 dystopian novel “Never Let Me Go” and the 2009 collection “Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall.”
The 62-year-old author was born in Japan and has lived in England since age 5.
On Thursday, outside his home in London, Ishiguro told reporters, “This is amazing and totally unexpected news for me. It comes at a time when the world is uncertain about its values, its leadership and its safety. I just hope that my receiving this huge honor will, even in a small way, encourage the forces for good.”
In selecting the bestselling author, the Nobel committee deviated from its inclination toward choosing more obscure writers — and its unorthodox and muchtalked-about selection last year of singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.
Other past winners this century include Alice Munro, Mario Vargas Llosa and Orhan Pamuk. Of all the 114 laureates in literature, only 14 have been women.