Kazuo Ishiguro: Contemporary Critical Perspectives

by Sean Matthews (Editor), Jeannette Baxter (Editor), Kaye Mitchell (Editor), Peter Childs (Editor), Sebastian Groes (Editor)

Overview

Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the finest and most accomplished contemporary writers of his generation. The short story author, television writer and novelist, included twice in Granta's list of Best Young British Writers, has over the past twenty-five years produced a body of work which is just as critically-acclaimed as it is popular with the general public. Like the writings of Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro's work is concerned with creating discursive platforms for issues of class, ethics, ethnicity, nationhood, place, gender and the uses and problems surrounding artistic representation. As a Japanese immigrant who came to Great Britain in 1960, Ishiguro has used his unique position and fine intellectual abilities to contemplate what it means to be British in the contemporary era. This guide traces the main themes throughout Ishiguro's writing whilst it also pays attention to his short stories and writing for television. It includes a new interview with the author, a preface by Haruki Murakami and discussion of James Ivory's adaptation of The Remains of the Day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826497239
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/01/2010
Series:	Contemporary Critical Perspectives
Pages:	151
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Sebastian Groes is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Roehampton University, UK. He is the series editor of Bloomsbury's Contemporary Critical Perspectives Series, the editor of Ian McEwan (2013), and co-editor of Kazuo Ishiguro (2009) and Julian Barnes (2011), all published by Bloomsbury.

Table of Contents

Foreword: On Having a Contemporary like Kazuo Ishiguro, Haruki Murakami Series Editors' Preface Acknowledgements Contributors Chronology of Kazuo Ishiguro's Life Introduction: ‘Your words open windows for me': The Art of Kazuo Ishiguro, Sebastian Groes (Roehampton University, UK) and Sean Matthews (University of Nottingham, UK) 1. ‘Somewhere just beneath the surface of things': Ishiguro's short fiction in context, Brian W. Shaffer (Rhodes College, Memphis, USA) 2. Strange Reads: Kazuo Ishiguro's A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World in Japan, Motoyuki Shibata (Tokyo University, Japan) and Motoko Sugano (Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan) 3. ‘Like the gateway to another world': Kazuo Ishiguro's Screenwriting, Sebastian Groes (Roehampton University) and Paul-Daniel Veyret (Universite de Montaigne-Bordeaux, France) 4. History, Memory and the Construction of Gender in A Pale View of Hills, Justine Baillie (University of Greenwich, UK) and Sean Matthews (University of Nottingham, UK) 5. Artifice and Absorption: The Modesty of The Remains of the Day, David James (University of Nottingham, UK) 6. ‘To Give a Name, Is That Still to Give?': Footballers and Film Actors in The Unconsoled, Richard Robinson (University of Swansea, UK) 7. When We Were Orphans: Narration and Detection in the case of Christopher Banks, Helen Machinal (Université de Bretagne Occidentale, France) 8. Controlling Time: Never Let Me Go, Mark Currie (University of East Anglia, UK) Afterword: On First Reading Never Let Me Go, John Mullan (University College, London, UK) ‘I'm Sorry I can't Say More': An Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro, Sean Matthews (University of Nottingham) References Further Reading Index

Editorial Reviews

This expertly edited volume on Ishiguro's work, which concludes with an interview with the author, should prove invaluable to scholars and students working on his fiction- whether on single novels or stories, or his work as a whole.--Sanford Lakoff

"Kazuo Ishiguro is a magnificently diverse and elusive writer and this volume's rich multiplicity of perspectives suits him perfectly. It is required reading for those who are studying or simply enchanted by his fiction - criticism at its most absorbing and spirited."
- Professor Richard Bradford, Professor of Literary History & Theory at the University of Ulster, UK

"This illuminating collection recontextualizes all of Kazuo Ishiguro's novels and his often-neglected short stories; it offers new and exciting critical insights into his literary craft as well as examines his work in cinema and visual arts. Editors Groes and Matthews have generated a timely and engrossing text on this important contemporary British author, one that is sure to be referenced often by readers and critics of Ishiguro's works."- Cynthia Wong, Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Colorado Denver, USA

From the Publisher