When We Were Orphans: Summary and book reviews of When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro, plus links to an excerpt from When We Were Orphans and a biography of Kazuo Ishiguro.

The maze of human memory--the ways in which we accommodate and alter it, deceive and deliver ourselves with it--is territory that Kazuo Ishiguro has made his own. In his previous novels, he has explored this inner world and its manifestations in the lives of his characters with rare inventiveness and subtlety, shrewd humor and insight. In When We Were Orphans, his first novel in five years, he returns to this terrain in a brilliantly realized story that illuminates the power of one's past to determine the present. Christopher Banks, an English boy born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, is orphaned at age nine when his mother and father both vanish under suspicious circumstances. Sent to live in England, he grows up to become a renowned detective and, more than twenty years later, returns to Shanghai, where the Sino-Japanese War is raging, to solve the mystery of the disappearances. The story is straightforward. Its telling is remarkable. Christopher's voice is controlled, detailed, and detached, its precision unsurprising in someone who has devoted his life to the examination of details and the rigors of objective thought. But within the layers of his narrative is slowly revealed what he can't, or won't, see: that his memory, despite what he wants to believe, is not unaffected by his childhood tragedies; that his powers of perception, the heralded clarity of his vision, can be blinding as well as enlightening; and that the simplest desires--a child's for his parents, a man's for understanding--may give rise to the most complicated truths. A masterful combination of narrative control and soaring imagination, When We Were Orphans is Kazuo Ishiguro at his best.

Media Reviews

Library Journal Atmosphere, historical detail, suspense Ishiguro's new book has it all, and if the parts finally don't add up, the author should still be credited with providing another great read. He should also be credited with originality, for though he investigates the polarities of insider-outsider, English-foreign, as he has done before (e.g., The Remains of the Day, The Unconsoled), he is hardly writing the same book again and again. Here, Christopher Banks is an Englishman born in early 20th-century Shanghai whose parents disappear mysteriously when he is nine. He is escorted to England, grows up to be a famed detective, and returns to Shanghai, convinced that his parents are still alive and that he must find them. The reader is less convinced that Banks is a real detective and wonder how he can entertain the romantic notion that his parents have been held hostage in Shanghai for decades, but the truth behind their disappearance comes as a satisfying surprise. And the writing is just wonderful, at once rich and taut. More writers should take style lessons from Ishiguro.   Kirkus An eerie, oddly beautiful tale from the internationally acclaimed author revolves around an enigmatic ordeal essentially similar to that undergone in Ishiguro's The Unconsoled (1995). ..... Elegiac, meditative, ultimately emotionally devastating, and the purest expression yet of the author's obsessive theme the buried life unearthed by its contingent interconnection with the passions, secrets, and priorities of unignorable other lives.   Publishers Weekly Despite some contrived events and a tendency to rework the characterizations and themes of his previous books, Ishiguro's latest novel triumphs.   The Times Literary Supplement - Joyce Carol Oates - [W]ill linger in the mind as an often fascinating, imaginative work of surpassing intelligence and taste.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated of 5 by Janette Ireland
no depth
The style of sentence construction looked like Ishiguro was trying to put himself into the 1930's, what he was doing was a bad imitation. It was as if the whole book was written by the child character, who never grew up in terms of maturity of...   Read More

Rated of 5 by Jason Williams
This is the best book ever. I think those words say it all. If I had to read again I would definetely read, without a doubt. It's worth reading it.

Readalikes

If you liked When We Were Orphans, try these:

---

---

These are 2 of the 5 readalike suggestions for When We Were Orphans. Members have full access to all readalikes. If you are a member, please login. To find out more about membership, click here.

Books with similar themes

• Novels
  
• Amateur & Private Detectives
  
• Asia 
  
• China 
  
• 1920s & '30s 
  
• Immigrants & Expatriates