Author Kazuo Ishiguro wins the Nobel Prize
Kazuo Ishiguro, this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, thanks the 2016 winner for his career
Kazuo Ishiguro, the British author of The Remains of the Day, has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The writer of seven novels to date, he confounded critics of the Swedish judging panel that last year decided to award the honour to Bob Dylan by saying: “Without Dylan’s words and music, I probably wouldn’t have been a writer.”
KAZUO ISHIGURO’S wife was just settling into the hairdresser’s chair when her phone rang. Then she made an apology her stylist was unlikely ever to have heard before. “My husband might have won a Nobel Prize,” she said. “Can I leave this for now?”
Lorna Macdougall returned to find the world’s press on the doorstep of their north London home. Ishiguro had become the first British winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature since 2007.
The 62-year-old author was as bemused as his wife. He only found out that he had won literature’s greatest accolade when his agency called to say they had heard something rather extraordinary on the news.
Dismissing it as “fake news”, it was some time before confirmation came from the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize.
In the meantime he had to tell his wife. He said last night: “This was an important day for my wife. She had spent months wondering whether she should change the colour of her hair. She went to the hairdresser – this momentous moment – and she was just about to have the tints done when I phoned and said, ‘Look this rumour’s going around that I’ve won the Nobel Prize. If it’s true you might have to come back to the house’.”
Ishiguro’s is an uncontroversial win, unlike Bob Dylan’s last year, which baffled many. But Ishiguro said Dylan had been a brilliant choice. “He was the single greatest hero for me when I was growing up. Without Dylan’s words and music, I probably wouldn’t have been a writer.”
Dylan famously declined to accept the award at last year’s prize-giving ceremony. But Ishiguro will go. When the Swedish Academy rang, he said, the caller “seemed genuinely surprised I was going to accept”.
Born in Nagasaki, Japan, Ishiguro moved with his family to Guildford, Surrey, when he was five. A graduate of the University of East Anglia’s creative writing course, he wrote The Remains of the Day in four weeks. It won the Man Booker Prize in 1989. The 1993 film received eight Oscar nominations.
Ishiguro said his win comes at a time when the world is uncertain about its values, leadership and safety: “I hope that my receiving this honour will, in a small way, encourage the forces for goodwill and peace at this time.”
The last British winner was Doris Lessing. Others include Harold Pinter, VS Naipaul and William Golding.
Sara Danius, from the Swedish Academy, said: “If you mix Jane Austen and Franza Kafka, add a little bit of Marcel Proust and you stir – but not too much – then you have Kazuo Ishiguro.”
‘This was an important day for my wife. She had spent months wondering whether she should change the colour of her hair’