Kazuo Ishiguro

Contemporary Critical Perspectives

Sean Matthews, Sebastian Groes

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780826497246
• eBook ISBN: 9780826438799
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the finest and most accomplished contemporary writers of his generation. The short story author, television writer and novelist, included twice in Granta's list of Best Young British Writers, has over the past twenty-five years produced a body of work which is just as critically-acclaimed as it is popular with the general public. Like the writings of Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro's work is concerned with creating discursive platforms for issues of class, ethics, ethnicity, nationhood, place, gender and the uses and problems surrounding artistic representation. As a Japanese immigrant who came to Great Britain in 1960, Ishiguro has used his unique position and fine intellectual abilities to contemplate what it means to be British in the contemporary era. This guide traces the main themes throughout Ishiguro's writing whilst it also pays attention to his short stories and writing for television. It includes a new interview with the author, a preface by Haruki Murakami and discussion of James Ivory's adaptation of The Remains of the Day.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword: On Having a Contemporary Like Kazuo Ishiguro
• Series Editors’ Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Chronology of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Life
• INTRODUCTION: ‘Your Words Open Windows for Me’: The Art of Kazuo Ishiguro
• CHAPTER ONE: ‘Somewhere Just Beneath the Surface of Things’: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Short Fiction
• CHAPTER TWO: Strange Reads: Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World in Japan
• CHAPTER THREE: ‘Like the Gateway to Another World’: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Screenwriting
• CHAPTER FOUR: History, Memory, and the Construction of Gender in Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills
• CHAPTER FIVE: Artifice and Absorption: The Modesty of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day
• CHAPTER SIX: ‘To Give a Name, Is That Still to Give?’: Footballers and Film Actors in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled
• CHAPTER SEVEN: Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans: Narration and Detection in the Case of Christopher Banks
• CHAPTER EIGHT: Controlling Time: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
• AFTERWORD: On First Reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
• ‘I’m Sorry I Can’t Say More’: An Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro
• References
• Further Reading
• Index