Beyond the Book: Background information when reading Never Let Me Go

Beyond the Book

This article relates to Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan in 1954. He came to Britain at the age of six when his father began research at the National Institute of Oceanography. He was educated at a grammar school for boys in Surrey and then read English and Philosophy at the University of Kent, Canterbury, followed by a creative writing course at the University of East Anglia.

In 1981 he published three short stories, then in 1982 he published A Pale View of Hills.  In 1983 he was nominated by Granta magazine as one of the 20 'Best of Young British Writers'.  An Artist of the Floating World followed in 1986, it won the Whitbread Book of the Year award and was short listed for the Booker Prize for Fiction.

The Remains of the Day was published in 1989 - it won the Booker Prize for Fiction and was later made into a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. His fourth novel, The Unconsoled was published in 1995 and his fifth, When We Were Orphans, in 2000.  Never Let Me Go was published in hardcover in 2005.

His work has been translated into approximately 30 languages. In 1995 he received the Order of the British Empire for service to literature and in 1998 was named a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.

Filed under

This "beyond the book article" relates to Never Let Me Go. It originally ran in April 2005 and has been updated for the March 2006 paperback edition. Go to magazine.