Kazuo Ishiguro Wins 2017 Nobel Literature Prize

62-year old English Author Kazuo Ishiguro has been awarded the Nobel Literature prize for 2017. The Nobel comes with a prize of about $1.1 million.

His works, including scripts for film and television, look at themes of memory, time and self-delusion.

Kazuo Ishiguro at an interview. Photo: Meridian BBC World Service

The writer said that the award was “flabbergastingly flattering”. He said:

“It’s a magnificent honour, mainly because it means that I’m in the footsteps of the greatest authors that have lived, so that’s a terrific commendation.”

He also hoped that the Nobel Prize would be a force for good in the world as it is now.

Ishiguro was born in Japan in 1954, after which he moved to England with his family. He read English and Philosophy at the University of Kent and studied an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. His first acclaimed novel A Pale View of Hills (1982) was his thesis. This is not the first award he’s winning as he won the Booker Prize in 1989 for The Remains of the Day, which was turned into an Oscar-nominated film.

Kazuo Ishiguro at a book signing. Photo: Ian Gavan/Getty Images

Ishiguro has written eight books, which have been translated into over 40 languages. See them below:

• A Pale View of Hills (1982), which was about a Japanese woman living in England trying to come to terms with her daughter’s death.
• An Artist of the Floating World (1986)
• The Remains of the Day (1989), which is about a butler in a stately home whose boss was a Nazi sympathiser.
• The Unconsoled (1995)
• When We Were Orphans (2000)
• Never Let Me Go (2005), which talks about a group of students at a boarding school living in a dystopian future.
• Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall (2009), which is an anthology
• Buried Giant (2015)

Ishiguro has also written a number of short stories and screenplays, including The White Countess and The Saddest Music in the World.

Congratulations, Kazuo Ishiguro.