Kazuo Ishiguro Contemporary Critical Perspectives

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.

Foreword: On Having a Contemporary like Kazuo Ishiguro, Haruki Murakami
Series Editors’ Preface
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Chronology of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Life
Introduction: ‘Your words open windows for me’: The Art of Kazuo Ishiguro, Sebastian Groes (Roehampton University, UK) and Sean Matthews (University of Nottingham, UK)
1. ‘Somewhere just beneath the surface of things’: Ishiguro’s short fiction in context, Brian W. Shaffer (Rhodes College, Memphis, USA)
2. Strange Reads: Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World in Japan, Motoyuki Shibata (Tokyo University, Japan) and Motoko Sugano (Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan)
3. ‘Like the gateway to another world’: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Screenwriting, Sebastian Groes (Roehampton University) and Paul-Daniel Veyret (Universite de Montaigne-Bordeaux, France)
4. History, Memory and the Construction of Gender in A Pale View of Hills, Justine Baillie (University of Greenwich, UK) and Sean Matthews (University of Nottingham, UK)
5. Artifice and Absorption: The Modesty of The Remains of the Day, David James (University of Nottingham, UK)
6. ‘To Give a Name, Is That Still to Give?’: Footballers and Film Actors in The Unconsoled, Richard Robinson (University of Swansea, UK)
7. When We Were Orphans: Narration and Detection in the case of Christopher Banks, Helen Machinal (Université de Bretagne Occidentale, France)
8. Controlling Time: Never Let Me Go, Mark Currie (University of East Anglia, UK)
Afterword: On First Reading Never Let Me Go, John Mullan (University College, London, UK)
‘I’m Sorry I can’t Say More’: An Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro, Sean Matthews (University of Nottingham) References
Further Reading
Index

Sebastian Groes is Lecturer in English Literature at Roehampton University, UK.