Happy Birthday Kazuo Ishiguro!

 [Tweet "Happy Birthday Kazuo Ishiguro!"] Kazuo Ishiguro is a British novelist. Born in Japan on November 8, 1954, he moved with his family to the UK when he was 5 years old. After gaining degrees in English and Philosophy and Creative Writing, his literary career began with three short stories published by Faber and Faber in a collection entitled Introduction 7: Stories by New Writers. 
He would go on to be nominated for the Man Booker Prize four times, winning in 1989 for the powerful novel The Remains of the Day in which Stevens, an English butler, reflects on his life spent serving his long-term employer Lord Darlington (a member of the aristocracy) and Mr Farraday (an American émigré). Told in the form of a diary, the novel captures the evolving social status of British domestic servants in the first half of the twentieth century, as well as the struggles of a dedicated and faithful man coming to terms with his life's missed opportunities. Described in the New York Times as "a dream of a book: a beguiling comedy of manners that evolves almost magically into a profound and heart-rending study of personality, class and culture," The Remains of the Day was also adapted for screen in a production starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, and more recently was the basis of a musical. Watch a clip from The Remains of the Day movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=426-XOKxhk8 On the subject of his art (and his interest in the lives of the elderly), Ishiguro once said that "I'm always trying to remind myself in my writing that while we may be very pleased with ourselves, we may look back with a different perspective, and see we may have acted out of cowardice and failure of vision... What I'm interested in is not the actual fact that my characters have done things they later regret. I'm interested in how they come to terms with it." Find books by Kazuo Ishiguro in our Catalogue - all of which are available to borrow at the ZODML Community Library. Discover more award-winning books at ZODML. Image source: Famous Authors