KAZUO ISHIGURO

About the author

▶ Name: Kazuo Ishiguro

▶ Date of birth: 8th November 1954
▶ Birthplace: Nagasaki, Japan
▶ Family: His parents moved to England in 1960 ▶
Studies: Was schooled at the University of Kent
and the University of East Anglia
▶ Dream job: Being a musician
▶ Reasons for writing: A consolation for something
that got broken
▶ First publication: A Pale View of Hills
▶ Other publications: An artist of the floating
world; The remains of the day; the Unconsoled. ▶
Civil status: Married
▶ Awards: Winifred Holtby Prize; Whitbread Book of
the Year; Brooker Prize.

AUTHOR’S STYLE AND TECHNIQUE

▶ Elaborate plotting chronology.
▶ Highly subjective narration.
▶ Period details and atmosphere very well captured.
▶ First person narrative style.
▶ Narrators often exhibit human failings.
▶ No sense of resolution.
The issues his characters confront are buried in the past, and those
issues remain unresolved. Many of his novels end on a note of
melancholic resignation, whereby his characters accept their past
and who they have become, and find comfort in that realization by a
 relief from mental anguish. This can be seen as a literary reflection
on the Japanese idea of mono no aware**.
They reveal their flaws implicitly during the narrative; the author
thus creates a sense of pathos* by allowing the reader to see the
narrator's flaws while being drawn into sympathy with him. That
pathos is often derived from the narrator's actions, or, more often,
inaction.

Definitions
▶ *Pathos is one of the three modes of persuasion
in rhetoric. Pathos appeals to the audience's
emotions.
▶ **mono no aware is "the pathos of things", also
translated as "an empathy toward things," or "a
pity toward things;" it is a Japanese term used to
describe the awareness of mujo or the
transience*** of things and a bittersweet sadness
at their passing.
▶ ***Transience expresses the Buddhist notion
that every conditioned existence, without
exception, is inconstant and in flux. According
to the impermanence doctrine, human life
embodies this flux in the aging process, the
cycle of birth and rebirth, and in any experience
of loss.