Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly-changing world through the eyes of a unique narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
An Artist of the Floating World
Written by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Shortlisted
- The Booker Prize 1986
- Published by Faber & Faber
Buy the book
Kazuo Ishiguro examines guilt, truth and ageing through the highly subjective reminiscences of a retired painter in post-war Japan
In 1948, Japan is rebuilding her cities after the calamity of World War II, her people putting defeat behind them and looking to the future. Celebrated painter Masuji Ono fills his days attending to his garden, his house repairs, his two grown daughters and his grandson, and his evenings drinking with old associates in quiet lantern-lit bars. His should be a tranquil retirement. But as his memories continually return to the past, a dark shadow begins to creep into his mind.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro’s works of fiction have earned him many honours around the world, including the Nobel Prize in Literature
More about Kazuo Ishiguro Other nominated books by Kazuo Ishiguro
Thought-provoking and unsettling by turns, Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel gradually unveils the true nature of three children’s apparently happy childhoods
Kazuo Ishiguro’s adventurous combination of historical fiction and detective story, set largely in England and Shanghai of the 1930s
Kazuo Ishiguro’s moving portrait of the perfect English butler, his loyalty and his fading, insular world in post-war England
Features
- Book recommendations
Booker Prize books that have been adapted for film and television
- Book recommendations
