Ishiguro wins Nobel for ‘uncovering the abyss’
Canadian literati rejoice over British author’s selection after two years of peculiar choices
“Delirious over Ishiguro news. This time the Nobel committee really got it right.” LYNNE KUTSUKAKE AUTHOR, THE TRANSLATION OF LOVE
Kazuo Ishiguro, the Japanese-born British novelist best known for The Remains of the Day, won the Nobel Literature Prize on Thursday — news that was greeted with much joy throughout the Canadian book world.
“This is just wonderful news! He is such a rare and mysterious writer, always surprising to me, with every book. I am just thrilled by this choice,” said Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient, in an email to Ishiguro’s Canadian editor, Knopf Canada’s Louise Dennys.
Dennys has been his editor and publisher in Canada since 1987; soon after meeting the man she calls “Ish,” her house, Lester and Orpen Dennys, published the first English-language edition of Ishiguro’s classic The Remains of the Day.
“I approached him and asked if I might see his next work having encountered him through one of his first novels An Artist of the Floating World, and he didn’t have a Canadian publisher at the time,” Dennys said in an interview.
“He sent me the manuscript of The Remains of the Day and I thought it was an extraordinary, luminous novel — you fall into history and love, the present inextricably bound up with the past and the future. And since then, I’ve watched all his novels become ever more cherished by Canadian readers — each one more hauntingly beautiful in a way that pierces your heart.”
That power is one of the traits the Swedish academy cited, calling his eight books works of emotional force that uncover “the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”
In The Remains of the Day, a butler at a grand house looks back on a life in service to the aristocracy. The book’s gentle rhythms and Downton Abbey- style setting gradually deepen into a darker depiction of the repressed emotional and social land- scape of 20th-century England. (The 1993 film adaptation starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson was nominated for eight Academy Awards.)
Like The Remains of the Day, his 2005 novel Never Let Me Go is not what it seems. What appears to be the story of three young friends at a boarding school gradually reveals itself as a dystopian tale with elements of science fiction that asks deep ethical questions.
“I’m so crazy about Never Let Me Go that I’ve read it 10 times. There are days I feel I grew up at Hailsam and must soon begin donating my organs,” commented Neil Smith, author of Boo and Bang Crunch in an email.
“Kazuo Ishiguro! All his restless brilliance. I don’t think a reader, having passed through the maze of The Unconsoled, ever leaves it,” remarked Madeleine Thien, author of the internationally acclaimed Do Not Say We Have Nothing in an email to Dennys.
The selection of the 62-year-old Ishiguro marked a return to tradi- tional literature following two years of unconventional choices by the Swedish Academy for the almost$1.4-million prize. In 2016 they chose the American songwriter Bob Dylan, while in 2015 it was Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time,” the academy wrote at the time.
“This is amazing and totally unexpected news,” the author himself said in a statement. “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 honour will, even in a small way, encourage the forces for goodwill and peace at this time.”
“He’s a very interesting writer in many ways,” said Sara Danius, the academy’s permanent secretary. “I would say that if you mix Jane Austen — her comedy of manners and her psychological insights — with Kafka, then I think you have Ishiguro.”
Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, but moved with his family to Britain when he was 5.
Although Ishiguro did not return to Japan until his mid-30s, his first two novels, A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World both centred on Japanese characters.
He said in 2015 that he’d noticed that “because it was a novelty that someone with a Japanese background was writing novels in English, all the (reviewers’) metaphors tended to be Japanese-y. They would talk about a very still pond. With carp.”
An Artist of the Floating World, in which a Japanese artist looks back on his life, was a finalist for the prestigious Booker Prize for fiction. He won the Booker in 1989 for The Remains of the Day.
Danius said the choice of Ishiguro did not show intention to avoid the controversy sparked by last year’s pick of Dylan.
“No, we don’t consider these issues. So we thought that last year was a straightforward choice — we picked one of the greatest poets in our time. And this year, we have picked one of the most exquisite novelists in our time,” she said.
Lynne Kutsukake, the third generation Japanese Canadian author of The Translation of Love, would seem to concur. “Delirious over Ishiguro news. This time, the Nobel committee really got it right.” With files from Star wire services