Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954, but moved to Britain with his family at the age of five. His debut novel, "A Pale View of Hills" (1982), won the Winifred Holtby Prize. His second novel, "An Artist of the Floating World" (1986), received the Whitbread and Scanno awards in Italy and was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 1989, his subsequent novel "The Remains of the Day" won the Booker Prize and brought him worldwide fame: the book was translated into 24 languages and is now considered one of the most important post-war novels in the English language. The film adaptation by James Ivory, which was nominated for eight Academy Awards, also achieved global success. His next novel, "The Unconsoled" (1995), was awarded the Cheltenham Prize. In 1995, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), and in 1998, he was made a Knight of the Arts and Letters by the French government. His novel "When We Were Orphans" (2000) was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. This was followed by the novel "Never Let Me Go" (2005), which was included by "Time" magazine in its list of the 100 greatest English-language novels since 1923, the short story collection "Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall" (2009), and the novel "The Buried Giant" (2015). In 2017, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature because, according to the Swedish Academy's announcement, he "uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world" in his novels of great literary power.