Kazuo Ishiguro

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Kazuo Ishiguro (2017)

Sir Kazuo Ishiguro OBE ( Japanese 石 黒 一 雄 Ishiguro Kazuo ; born November 8, 1954 in Nagasaki , Japan ) is a British writer of Japanese origin. His third and most famous novel, What Was Left Of The Day , was awarded the Booker Prize in 1989. It was also made into a film, as was the novel Everything we had to give, published in 2005 . In 2017, Ishiguro received the Nobel Prize in Literature . The Swedish Academy recognized him as a writer "who, in novels with a strong emotional impact, exposed the abyss in our supposed connection with the world".

Life

Ishiguro was born in Japan and lived there until 1960. When he was five years old, his family moved to the United Kingdom, where his father was to do research as an oceanographer on behalf of the British government for a limited period of one to two years. The temporary residence eventually became the family's permanent residence. Kazuo Ishiguro grew up in Guildford , Surrey . He first studied English and Philosophy at the University of Kent , Canterbury (BA 1978) and then attended the Malcolm Bradbury- led creative writing program at the University of East Anglia , Norwich , where he earned his MA in literature in 1980. During this time, Ishiguro was already writing his first short stories , all of which were published and earned him a contract for his first novel before it was even completed. He was involved in numerous social projects in the 1980s. He also met his future wife, the social worker Lorna MacDougall, whom he married in 1986. Today he lives with her and his daughter Naomi, born in 1992, in London .

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According to Sebastian Groes and Barry Lewis, Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the most accomplished and successful contemporary writers. His books appeal to literary critics as well as a global readership, have been bestsellers , have received high-level literary prizes and have been translated into over 40 languages. Ishiguro is primarily a novelist , but has also worked in other media: he wrote short stories, two television dramas and the screenplay for the feature film The White Countess (2005) by James Ivory . Since 2007 he has been writing lyrics for the jazz singer Stacey Kent . As an author born in Japan but raised in England, he writes “the most beautiful English” according to Viet Thanh Nguyen . His work combines his unusual perspective as a Japanese immigrant with intellectual sharpness and explores topics such as class , ethnicity , national identity , hierarchy and morality as well as the forms of expression and meaning of art.

Although Ishiguro belongs to the post-war generation, the experience of World War II and other atrocities of the twentieth century are often the focus of his works. However, these are quieter, less controversial than those of other writers of his generation, and focus more on ethical issues and dilemmas. His first two novels, A Pale View of Hills (1982, German: Back then Nagasaki ) and An Artist of the Floating World (1986, German: The Painter of the Floating World ) deal with the Japanese war experiences during the Second World War, in particular the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki , and how the main characters deal with them. Both novels are about alienating families and the search for identity.

Ishiguro's third and most tester novel The Remains of the Day (1989, dt .: The Remains of the Day ) are already considered a modern classic . In it, the author looks at British fascism in the run-up to World War II and the waning influence of the British Empire in the aftermath. The main character is an aging butler who embarks on a journey through England that is also a journey into his past. Ishiguro received the Booker Prize for the novel . It was in 1993 with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson filmed . His fourth novel The Unconsoled (1995, German: The Unconsoled ) pays homage to Franz Kafka . Primarily designed as an emotional journey by a famous pianist, the novel has a complex structure reminiscent of a labyrinth and unites literary realism with surrealism . In addition, he takes up a topic that has a special meaning for Ishiguro: the music , which he also explores in his narrative cycle Nocturnes (2009, German: At Nightfall ) - named after the musical form of the nocturne .

In his novels, Ishiguro also undertakes excursions into classic genre literature, but does not follow their usual conventions. The novel When We Were Orphans (2000, when we were orphans ) can be read as a detective novel that is set in both England and China. However, the protagonist invents an identity as a detective in order to camouflage the biographical background of his investigations. The novel Never Let Me Go (German: Everything we had to give ) about human clones as organ donors or “spare parts store”, published in 2005, takes up elements of science fiction . It was considered by many critics to be the most important story of the year (e.g. Kulturzeit in 3sat of November 24, 2005) and was filmed in 2010 . The Buried Giant (dt .: from 2015 The Buried Giant ) borrows from the Fantasy -literature. Daniel Kehlmann locates the novel “exactly at the transition point between historical and fantastic storytelling” and comes to the conclusion that the book is “fantastically entertaining and historically relevant”.

What distinguishes all of Ishiguro's works for Groes and Lewis is their emotional power, which allows the reader not only to take an interest in the characters, but also by communicating them to other people and the state of the world. Although the protagonists are not always sympathetic and precisely because of their often lack of empathy , the reader's empathy is awakened. The Japanese Americanist Motoyuki Shibati calls this "the real magic of Ishiguro". Literary means by which he works, ask the reader to its own attitude, which are dramatic irony , gaps and voids as well as the direct approach by the narrator. By reducing the references to place and time, his stories acquire universal validity.

Groes and Lewis describe Ishiguro as a classic writer in the tradition of humanism . Ishiguro is aware of the contradictions and ambiguities of the modern world, but unlike many postmodernists, he does not retreat to the position of uncertainty and relativity, but gives his characters the certainty that their actions and decisions have meaning. Even in an apparently senseless world, he saves his characters human dignity and the opportunity to find meaning in life. In doing so, he conveys the belief in a human community that extends beyond local and temporal boundaries, and ascribes in particular the ability to comfort and healing to art.

Novels and short stories

Filmography (selection)

Ishiguro with contributors to Everything We Had to Give at the 2010 British Independent Film Awards

As an executive producer

Scripts
  • A Profile of Arthur J. Mason . 1984, directed by Michael Whyte
  • The gourmet. Short film 1986, directed by Michael Whyte
  • The Saddest Music in the World (original script draft). 2003, directed by Guy Maddin
  • The White Countess . 2005, directed by James Ivory

Awards (selection)

literature

  • Stefanie Fricke: Kazuo Ishiguro. In: Critical lexicon for contemporary foreign language literature. Edition text and criticism, München 2009.
  • Sebastian Groes, Barry Lewis (Eds.): Kazuo Ishiguro. New Critical Visions of the Novels. Red Globe Press, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-230-23238-9 .
  • Barry Lewis: Kazuo Ishiguro . Manchester Univ. Press, Manchester 2000.
  • Sean Matthews, Sebastian Groes (Eds.): Kazuo Ishiguro: Contemporary Critical Perspectives . Continuum, London 2009.
  • Mike Petry: Narratives of Memory and Identity: The Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1999.
  • Brian W. Shaffer: Understanding Kazuo Ishiguro . Univ. of South Carolina Press, Columbia 1998.
  • Brian W. Shaffer, Cynthia F. Wong (Eds.): Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro . Univ. Press of Mississippi, Jackson 2008.
  • Cynthia F. Wong: Kazuo Ishiguro. 2nd Edition. Northcote House, Tavistock 2005.

Web links

Commons : Kazuo Ishiguro  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biobibliographical note on the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature.
  2. ^ Press release from the Swedish Academy of October 13, 2017.
  3. ↑ Never Let Me Go: A Profile of Kazuo Ishiguro . In: Poets & Writers . May 1, 2005 ( pw.org [accessed December 29, 2017]).
  4. ↑ a b c d Sebastian Groes, Barry Lewis: Introduction. "It's good manners, really" - Kazuo Ishiguro and the Ethics of Empathy . In: Kazuo Ishiguro. New Critical Visions of the Novels. Red Globe Press, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-230-23238-9 , p. 1.
  5. ↑ British writer Kazuo Ishiguro: Nobel Literature Prize is 'a magnificent honor'. Kazuo Ishiguro has won the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature. bbc.com 2017-10-05
  6. ↑ "most beautiful English". Quoted from: Carolyn Kellogg: British writer Kazuo Ishiguro is a rarity and now a Nobel laureate . In: Los Angeles Times October 5, 2017.
  7. ^ A b Sebastian Groes, Barry Lewis: Introduction. "It's good manners, really" - Kazuo Ishiguro and the Ethics of Empathy . In: Kazuo Ishiguro. New Critical Visions of the Novels. Red Globe Press, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-230-23238-9 , p. 6.
  8. ^ Sebastian Groes, Barry Lewis: Introduction. "It's good manners, really" - Kazuo Ishiguro and the Ethics of Empathy . In: Kazuo Ishiguro. New Critical Visions of the Novels. Red Globe Press, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-230-23238-9 , pp. 2, 8-9.
  9. ^ Sebastian Groes, Barry Lewis: Introduction. "It's good manners, really" - Kazuo Ishiguro and the Ethics of Empathy . In: Kazuo Ishiguro. New Critical Visions of the Novels. Red Globe Press, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-230-23238-9 , p. 7.
  10. ↑ Daniel Kehlmann: Wandering in the fog to displace. Review, faz.net, September 8, 2015, accessed September 8, 2015.
  11. ↑ "the real Ishiguro magic". Quoted from: Sebastian Groes, Barry Lewis: Introduction. "It's good manners, really" - Kazuo Ishiguro and the Ethics of Empathy . In: Kazuo Ishiguro. New Critical Visions of the Novels. Red Globe Press, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-230-23238-9 , p. 2.
  12. ^ Sebastian Groes, Barry Lewis: Introduction. "It's good manners, really" - Kazuo Ishiguro and the Ethics of Empathy . In: Kazuo Ishiguro. New Critical Visions of the Novels. Red Globe Press, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-230-23238-9 , pp. 3-4.
  13. ^ Sebastian Groes, Barry Lewis: Introduction. "It's good manners, really" - Kazuo Ishiguro and the Ethics of Empathy . In: Kazuo Ishiguro. New Critical Visions of the Novels. Red Globe Press, London 2011, ISBN 978-0-230-23238-9 , pp. 3, 8-10.
personal data
SURNAME Ishiguro, Kazuo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 石 黒 一 雄 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer of Japanese descent
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Nagasaki