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When We Were Orphans

by Kazuo Ishiguro

3.41 of 5 stars 3.41 · rating details · 8,399 ratings · 880 reviews

"... I've worked hard over the years to check the spread of crime and evil wherever it has manifested itself."

Christopher Banks, the protagonist of Kazuo Ishiguro's fifth novel, When We Were Orphans, has dedicated his life to detective work but behind his successes lies one unsolved mystery: the disappearance of his parents when he was a small boy living in the International Settlement in Shanghai. Moving between England and China in the inter-war period, the book, encompassing the turbulence and political anxieties of the time and the crumbling certainties of a Britain deeply involved in the opium trade in the East, centres on Banks's idealistic need to make sense of the world through the small victories of detection and his need to understand finally what happened to his mother and father.

This new novel, however, is the deliberate antithesis of the classic English detective story--the hermetic country-house worlds of Agatha Christie, the classic "locked room" puzzles in which order and sanity is restored at the story's end. Ishiguro mimics the functional style and clipped speech patterns of the genre, ironising its reliance on melodrama and stereotype, while developing a narrative of subtlety, great emotional depth, and political and cultural acuity: what we get is a negative image of classic detective fiction, in which the solved crimes are mentioned in passing and the real mystery is played out in the psychology of the detective himself. The act of detection, Ishiguro suggests, is one we all perform on our own past, struggling to marshal clues and evidence whilst trying to construct the story of ourselves; the one mystery Banks seems unable to solve is his own.

If Ishiguro's concerns as a writer remain broadly the same as in previous novels such as his Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day—the complexities, instability and elusiveness of memory, dramatised through a first-person narrator—this new book shows how flexible and powerful the form has become for him. Banks' quest is both deeply personal and resonantly emblematic of us all:

...for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.

When We Were Orphans is an astonishing book, rich and profound on many levels, and one that will live clearly in the memory of all who read it. --Burhan Tufail

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320 pages

Published (first published May 12th 2000)

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Jun 10, 2012 William rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: uk, fiction, 20-ce

Second reading. Ishiguro's novels are nothing if not enigmatic. There's disorientation; the reader is never quite sure where he stands. When We Were Orphans is a quasi-Bildungsroman or coming of age story. It is set over a period of fifty years or so in London, Shanghai and then back in London again.

Narrator Christopher Banks is born of English parents with whom he lives in the International Concession in Shanghai. Around 1915 or so they disappear, when he is about nine, and are believed victims...more

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Aug 13, 2012 K.D. Oliveros rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to K.D. by: Booker Shortlist 2000

Shelves: british, drama, detective, booker, mystery, saddest

This is my 7th Ishiguro and I am happy for two reasons: (1) I am now an Ishiguro completist and (2) unlike a couple of his earlier books, I actually liked this one. I almost rated this with 4 stars but I could not do that because I found the first half of the book unbelievably boring. However, Ishiguro managed to make the book’s last 50-70 pages truly engaging that I thought I was able to squirt some tears from my eyes when the boyhood friends were back together. It was one of the most poignant...more

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Jul 12, 2007 Bec rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: would-not-read-again

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jul 14, 2008 Seth Hahne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When We Were Orphans was, for me, a pretty fascinating exploration of the difficulties typical to the lens of overgrown sentimentailty through which one approaches the vaguely remembered past. As the narration continues, one wonders just how ephemerally Christopher Banks, the narrator, holds his grasp on reality. Quite clearly his recollections of the distant past are modified to fit his circumstances and the man he's become—and paradoxically, the man he's become is a debt owed to these remember...more When We Were Orphans was, for me, a pretty fascinating exploration of the difficulties typical to the lens of overgrown sentimentailty through which one approaches the vaguely remembered past. As the narration continues, one wonders just how ephemerally Christopher Banks, the narrator, holds his grasp on reality. Quite clearly his recollections of the distant past are modified to fit his circumstances and the man he's become—and paradoxically, the man he's become is a debt owed to these remembered (sometimes falsely so) experiences—but it may be more than that. It may be that the strength of his memories are so robust that they exert force upon even his more immediate experiences, colouring them to match the pallette of the world he's inherited from memoir.

Christopher Banks is (or becomes over the span of years from which he narrates) one of Britain's brightest and most celebrated detectives, solving murder after murder with apparently little trouble. The man is quite plainly a rational genius. He does, however, have a great single ambition that propels him through his life—one that even drove him to his successful occupation. Banks hopes to one day tackle the most daunting crime of his life. The kidnapping of his parents.

When Banks was a youth, living in the British Settlement in Shanghai just post the turn of the twentieth century, his parents were taken from him. As an adult, Banks intends to return to Shanghai, solves the disappearance, and even perhaps have his parents restored to him.

As an abstract exploration of the nature of both history and memory, When We Were Orphans is an entirely worthwhile investigation, but my favourite conceit of Ishiguro's here was something far less integral (perhaps) to the story's primary goal. Banks throughout the telling speaks of this case and that, a series of murders and mysteries in which he is engaged to solve. Each one is solved to the adulation of British society and to the forwarding of Banks' reputation as one who understand intrinsically the criminal mind. And yet. Not once are we treated to any explanation of the details of such crimes or their solutions. While Ishiguro keeps us at arm's length from such unseemly designs (for they are not among his purposes in this tale), he takes special care to continuously draw our attention to the fact of such crimes and cases, perhaps foreshadowing the fact that it is the effect of the circumstance rather than the solution that truly matters in the end.

Perhaps finding solutions to tragedies do nothing in the end to soften the brute fact of the tragedy?(less)

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May 07, 2011 Blair rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical, mystery-thriller-etc, booker-prize, read-on-holiday

The first thing I noticed about this book was that the narrative voice - belonging to Christopher Banks, a successful detective in 1930s England - is remarkably similar to that of Stevens, the protagonist of Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. While at first this drew me in (I loved The Remains of the Day), I soon began to find it offputting. I had assumed Stevens' voice was unique, so it was a bit of a disappointment to find that what I assumed were facets of that character are actually features...more The first thing I noticed about this book was that the narrative voice - belonging to Christopher Banks, a successful detective in 1930s England - is remarkably similar to that of Stevens, the protagonist of Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. While at first this drew me in (I loved The Remains of the Day), I soon began to find it offputting. I had assumed Stevens' voice was unique, so it was a bit of a disappointment to find that what I assumed were facets of that character are actually features of the author's own style. The plot traces Christopher's life from his fondly remembered childhood in Shanghai's International Settlement, culminating in his return to the same area as an adult. We learn how Christopher's loss of his parents - supposedly abducted - at a young age resulted in an obsession with solving mysteries, ultimately leading to his success as a detective. At the apex of his career, he returns to Shanghai to attempt to discover what happened to his parents. Finding the beloved places of his youth much altered, his increasingly obsessive need to solve the mystery leads him further and further into a war zone, providing the story's dramatic climax.

Christopher is a very interesting character, if not an entirely likeable one. It's almost immediately obvious he is an unreliable narrator, both in the traditional sense (he is holding things back from the reader) and in more unusual ways (he doesn't actually seem to recognise or understand the truth of things himself). It's clear to the observer of his story that he isn't telling the whole truth, but it also quickly becomes apparent that what he genuinely thinks he remembers, for example in relation to his status among his schoolfriends as a boy, is not accurate, and this double unreliability is both intriguing and confusing. The problem is that in the end, many of the plot's events just don't seem to hang together properly - Christopher's childhood obsession with finding his parents leading to him pursuing a career as a detective and ultimately becoming a key figure in events in Shanghai later in life; his 'relationship' with Sarah, which seems to develop very oddly; his ridiculous conviction that he will discover his parents alive and well, not to mention the fact that nobody around him contradicts this belief. With Christopher being obviously untruthful, I expected some loose ends, but it's very frustrating that nothing is explained properly, either from his viewpoint or objectively.

I think Ishiguro is an excellent writer, and although Christopher's voice echoes Stevens', the narrative gradually establishes him as a unique and memorable character in his own right. Perhaps the similarity between the two makes this an even greater achievement. And I can appreciate that Christopher not unlocking the mystery of his past is entirely the point, but I still felt unsatisfied at the end. I enjoyed reading the book, but ultimately felt like I'd taken a journey on which neither I or the protagonist had observed or learned very much.(less)

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Oct 14, 2007 Kay rated it 2 of 5 stars

I've been putting off this review for a few weeks, hoping that something inchoate in me would gell, which would make me happier than it being something incoherent in Ishiguro's writing that didn't gell.

Nothing gelled.

I'll try not to write spoilers, although as I have no idea what the denouement of this book is (let alone what it might 'mean') it would be hard difficult for me to know if I did - however, the strands of the story are:

- that the narrator is an expatriate of Shanghai, both of whose...more

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Feb 03, 2009 Libby rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: thesis-book-list

Many reviews here have commented on Ishiguro's unreliable narrators (let's let that classification stand, whether or not it is entirely valid or really applies to all of his work), as if this aspect of his fiction is so obvious, or that it has been so exhaustively mined, that there is little to nothing left to say about such a narrative strategy.

Christopher Banks, When We Were Orphans' narrator, is certainly unreliable, yes. But our relationship to him as an unreliable narrator is a strange one,...more

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Sep 30, 2007 Dave rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: top-shelf

I'm happy to say that I've only been disappointed once by a Kazuo Ishiguro book. "Never Let Me Go" is one of the best things I've ever read, and "When We Were Orphans" isn't far behind.

Christopher Banks overcomes a tragic childhood, it seems, to become the preeiminent detective in Great Britain. This allows him access to the country's elite social circles, but it's clear there are precious few people around whom Christopher is really comfortable. As a child, these people were his parents, famil...more I'm happy to say that I've only been disappointed once by a Kazuo Ishiguro book. "Never Let Me Go" is one of the best things I've ever read, and "When We Were Orphans" isn't far behind.

Christopher Banks overcomes a tragic childhood, it seems, to become the preeiminent detective in Great Britain. This allows him access to the country's elite social circles, but it's clear there are precious few people around whom Christopher is really comfortable. As a child, these people were his parents, family friend Uncle Phillip, and childhood chum Akira. Living in Shanghai, Christopher (dubbed Puffin by the adults in his life) and Akira played at all kinds of fantasies. But matters turned serious when Christopher's father disappears on his way to work one morning. At Akira's prompting, the two begin to play at solving the mystery of Mr. Banks' disappearance. Christopher becomes obsessed with detectives and detective work.

The book is typical of the Ishiguro style, with its frequent flashbacks, simple language, and fascinating first person narrator. As a character, Christopher is fascinating, complex, and confusing. Despite his obvious heroic reputation, he seems to be the subject of periodic ridicule. People begin to blame him for not fixing "the situation" in Shanghai. When he proposes to become the ward of an orphaned girl, he is initially met with cold skepticism. Yet all of these incidents eventually resolve amicably. Suffice it to say, there is more going on with Christopher Banks than he might have you believe.

This is, after all, a world where detectives are famous.

The continued search to find his parents in Shanghai is harrowing and heartbreaking, but Ishiguro never takes us outside Christopher's head to bring everything neatly together. It reminded me of "A Pale View of the Hills", where he also leaves the reader a little in the dark, capable of figuring out the mystery, perhaps, but not instructed clearly how to do it. These are great books to have discussions about, and I look forward to the chance to discuss "When We Were Orphans" with someone. It is a superb, mysterious book that I recommend very highly.
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Sep 10, 2011 Yulia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I feel very conflicted about this novel. I was completely absorbed while reading it, though annoyed by an overly dramatic section 4/5th through and unsettled by the ending, but I think it may be a book I'll grow to be fonder of, once my uneasiness wears off. It certainly makes me wish to try another work of his. I suppose it succeeded in that regard. Bravo? I don't think I was as disappointed with it as I felt last night, certainly. 3.5 stars it is. . . Wait,no, it's gone up to five stars. I fee...more

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Apr 29, 2012 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ishiguro creates characters who think intensely about what they think and feel, but never seem to really know themselves. That, plus the dreamy, almost surreal plotting, where you never quite know what's real, and what's a dream, a fantasy, a hallucination, an alternate reality (like Murakami, only ... you know ... written well) is what keeps me coming back. I've now read the grand total of three, and I think I'm finally starting to 'get' him.

This one goes along all nice and conventional (or so...more Ishiguro creates characters who think intensely about what they think and feel, but never seem to really know themselves. That, plus the dreamy, almost surreal plotting, where you never quite know what's real, and what's a dream, a fantasy, a hallucination, an alternate reality (like Murakami, only ... you know ... written well) is what keeps me coming back. I've now read the grand total of three, and I think I'm finally starting to 'get' him.

This one goes along all nice and conventional (or so you think, despite that niggling feeling that all is not as it appears), then whammo! you're plunged into an alternate, terrifying reality (is it?) and then, just as quickly, yanked back out again. All the while, a cool, British "pip pip old chap" civility, a veneer of sanity that seems to pass for reality, smooths over the rough edges and you coast along, even though you know there is something nasty and brutal - a secret, a revelation, a truth - lurking just under the surface.

The story is about a young boy whose parents disappear in Shanghai between WW I and II; who grows up to be a famous detective and comes back to solve the mystery of their disappearance.

Only, that's not really or only what it's about: it's about that detective's need to put the pieces of his past back together now that he's reached adulthood to understand who he was -- and now is -- and who his parents were. To reconstruct himself from a past where there are gaping holes and missing pieces, the biggest ones being his parents.

So it's about childhood trauma and memory and grief and also, the adult drive, guilt and remorse that emerges from it. One of my favourite things about the novel is how Ishiguro portrays childhood egocentricity - the child's core belief that everything that happens is because he did (or didn't do) something. He is the *cause* of all that happens that is bad (or good, but mostly bad) and therefore he must be the saviour. This idea - that Banks is a saviour - is deeply important in this novel. It explains personality and plot. Ishiguro also uses a "slats of the blind" metaphor, which he returns to at least three times - and I don't know if he is being intentionally noir, I suspect so, but it is a perfect detail.

The unreliability of Banks' - the great detective's - narration is positively masterful: nothing you can put your finger on, but a clear sense that he's not what he seems to be, and his recollections, out of which the entire story is formed, may not be (ironically) accurately reported or remembered. But then again, that is how childhood memories, laid down during trauma, function. Ishiguro has an iron grip on the psychology here - especially, the friendship of two young boys and a young boy's love for his mother. I love the way he reports conversations the adult Banks recalls, and how his child's ears heard and interpreted them. And Ishiguro then manages to take the childhood events, places and symbolism and later, turn them into nightmarish details that come to resonate even more deeply.

I'm not sure I fully comprehend exactly what the "case" is that Banks is trying to solve other than the obvious (or more precisely, why the 'case' seems to have global implications); I suspect a big analogy here, entirely too obvious for me to get. *sigh* Nor am I sure that (view spoiler) but I also know that I'm content to let the fuzzy dreamlike details and layers of meaning, especially the theme of loss and dislocation, be what I remember of this novel.
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May 10, 2011 Megan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: not-mine-library, mystery, fiction

This is my second book by Kazuo Ishiguro (The first being Never Let Me Go) Once again, I love his writing style and his incredibly complex and flawed characters. In When We Were Orphans, Ishiguro presented a narrator who while reliable, apparently views events and situations (especially those close to him) quite differently than others. The writing and character development are undoubtedly Ishiguro’s strengths in this novel.

Protagonist Christopher Banks is a wonderfully flawed and curious man w...more

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Dec 03, 2008 Bobbi Woods rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club

This is the story of Christopher Banks, a "popular" British detective in the 1930's who is recalling his childhood in Shanghai, China, where his father worked for a company that was involved with the opium trade. Somehow, his parents mysteriously disappear and he is shipped off to England to live with his aunt.

During the first half of the book, Christopher is trying to piece together events in his mind from the past and during the second half, he actually goes to Shanghai to do some investigatin...more

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Sep 07, 2008 Drick rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This first person story takes place in the 1920's to 1950's. A British boy born in Shanghai moves to Englad when his parents mysteriously disappear from their home in Shanghai. He grows up to be a detective and eventually returns to Shanghai to solve the mystery of his parents' disappearance. All of this occurs with the decline of England's influence in China and WWII in the background.

One of the most striking things about the book for me was how it portrayed the colonial hubris of the British i...more

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Jul 24, 2008 Tracy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Hmm...from the picture I've selected, it looks like this was made into a movie! I didn't realize that, but it would be a cool movie.

I am certain that many folks would not like this book, but I very much did. I like Ishiguro's careful style, even if it is out of the mid 20th century! It feels like E M Forster wrote a new book, the style is so careful and the content is to built up.

The story is about Christopher Banks, who was raised in China during the early part of the 20th century. When his fat...more

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Apr 25, 2008 Nacho rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: británicos, contemporánea

Me ha resultado una lectura amena, pero no le he terminado de encontrar el punto. Me dejan frío demasiadas cosas.

El inicio esta narrado con un toque victoriano que parece estar pidiendo a gritos que James Ivory saque la chequera y lo adapte al cine. A lo largo de todo ese arranque, el protagonista se muestra pueril y me cuesta demasiado empatizar con él. También me desconcierta la aparición constante de personajes que se mofan del narrador sin que éste parezca percatarse en absoluto. A veces me...more

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Mar 28, 2008 Kitty-Wu rated it 4 of 5 stars

Me gusta mucho como escribe Ishiguro. Quizá por sus orígenes asiáticos y su formación anglosajona, su escritura es peculiar. Me gusta porque transmite placidez, y al mismo tiempo, escribiendo sobre cosas que en un principio no me tendrían porqué interesar demasiado, me engancha totalmente. Este libro tiene partes muy buenas, y me ha gustado mucho conocer la evolución en la vida de Shangai en los años de la guerra del opio y posteriores. La vida de la alta sociedad británica no me interesa en abs...more

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Nov 25, 2007 Lydia rated it 3 of 5 stars

WARNING! SPOILERS
I'm not sure what to say about this book. It read like a well-written parody of a children's detective story, but, for me, ultimately failed to climb high enough above that to let me take it seriously. Since we are never sure how much we can believe our narrator, it is difficult to know how to feel. ANd we are presented with an awful lot of material that can invoke strong feeling.

The very notion that Christopher Banks is searching for his long lost parents so many years later i...more

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Sep 25, 2007 minnie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I enjoyed reading this book and read it in a week.The Depiction of Shanghai in the 1930's is fascinating.The book begins with the boy Christopher Banks living in Shanghai,playing detective games with his friend Akira the japanese boy next door.Christophers mother is a campaigner against the Opium trade that his father works for.When his parents are kidnapped he is sent to England to live with an aunt,he grows up to become a celebrated detective and devotes his life to finding out what happened t...more

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Aug 14, 2007 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars

On my list of cities of the past I'd like to visit, Shanghai around 1931 would be high on the list--highly international, cosmopolitan, seedy, the air of impending doom never far away. This book starts there, and then goes back and forth to London and Shanghai in 1937 during the Japanese invasion as our narrator uses his mostly reliable memory to tell the story of how he became an orphan and his attempts to find his parents. After his parents disappeared, he is sent back to England where he beco...more

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Mar 17, 2012 Anita rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Overall an engrossing story, that piqued my interest in learning more about the British settlements in China before World War II and the opium trade. At times I found the main character to be a bit immature and idealistic, but I suppose that is how anyone would be had they suffered a similar fate. I did feel the ending to be sort of a cop out, and would have liked to have seen more development of the story during the war years, but for the most part I enjoyed this book.

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Aug 01, 2011 Ian added it · review of another edition

Starts off well, builds up to a potentially great finish, but too much towards the end doesn't really work.

For example, although I understand the narrator is a little deluded as to the importance of his solving the case of his missing parents, either everyone else he came across was similarly deluded, or else they were all just humouring him for no obvious reason.

Bumping into his old friend Akira as he did was just daft, unless it was Ishiguro being clever and me missing something.

Additionall...more

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Mar 01, 2009 Zen Cho rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: written-by-poc, interwar, crime-or-mystery

What a strange book.

At first I wasn't impressed, then I got more impressed because I figured the narrative was keeping a lot of things from us, so well done, narrative. But then the narrative didn't burst out with any stunning revelation. (I don't count what happened to his parents as a stunning revelation, because I wasn't curious enough about what happened to them, though of course it woulda pissed me off if he hadn't revealed it in the end.) I *was* curious about what was going on with this d...more

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Jan 03, 2009 Jae rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008-books

This was absolutely fantastic. Ostensibly this is a detective story, one of my favorite kinds, atmospheric and lyrical in its own way, about a man searching for answers as to his parents' disappearance during his childhood in Shanghai. But as the book progresses the genre becomes as unreliable as the narrator (another thing I love, unreliable narrators). Throughout the novel for me there was a building sense of anxiety as I kept thinking, this can't be right, there's something missing in this st...more

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Dec 27, 2008 Debbie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ishiguro has a very distant, formal voice, which at times works against his stories, in my opinion. His characters have to be squeezed into his voice, as opposed to a voice suited for character. This bothers me a bit and makes all his books seem too similar.

That said, he is a great storyteller. His narrative moves very well. He has an innate talent for putting this energy into his work and knows how to tangle a story with a bit of intrigue, yet still make his complex and original themes resonate...more

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Apr 15, 2013 Robert Wechsler rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: british-lit

This is a very sad novel, because even when the protagonist decides to commit himself to solving the world's problems, he is unable to distinguish between the world's problems and his own. Just as he is unable to distinguish between an injured Japanese soldier and the Japanese playmate of his youth. Just as he is unable to distinguish between solving a murder and preventing a world war. The novel, in effect, is his attempt to find out what really happened and to find the parents who had been (or...more

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Mar 31, 2013 Dana rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel

The thoughtfulness, intellect, and articulate language Kazou Ishiguro uses makes any story a good one for me. I was not as thrilled about this particular plot line but happily plugged along until the end because Ishiguro's style is so addicting and entrancing. Although the language can be a bit pedantic, the stories flow so nicely you almost forget you have a list as long as your forearm of words to look up. His main characters are always portrayed a bit too stuffy and stuck in their heads, whic...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Dolors rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-before-2011

Maybe not his best work, but reading his prose is always a treat, it's smooth like velvet.
Then, I loved the characters, Mr. Banks, the haunted detective searching for his lost parents in Shangai (he is a bit lost and weak sometimes, okay I admit it), but then, Sarah Hemmings ! Wow, what a heroine, she was really the best, the ambitious woman, the one everybody desires, mysterious, interesting, smart...and a bit sneaky. The perfect character for a gangsterish plot like this one.
Of course, the bo...more

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Mar 06, 2013 John rated it 2 of 5 stars

I have a tough time getting psyched for writing a review when it's a two-star book. So I'll keep this short. Ishiguro is a fabulous writer--I've enjoyed a few of his other books, and he's more than proficient at crafting pretty sentences and cohesive narratives. His sin here is the usual sin of 2-star books: it was largely boring. I'll add another sin: the characters felt underdeveloped. The narrator (an unreliable one at that--was it Kafka who famously invented the unreliable narrator? What exa...more

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Mar 05, 2013 Caren rated it 3 of 5 stars

The pace was too slow for my taste, and the tone too reminiscent of other, smarter works by Ishiguro. He specializes in emotionally restricted, somewhat self-deluded narrators, and the titular orphan here is no exception. There are some good twists on the orphan's quest to know his parents made here. The Shanghai-born British narrator reflects carefully on the insubstantial and partial nature of childhood memories. But, ultimately the parallels between his own private condition as a well-off orp...more

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Feb 22, 2013 Gabriel C. rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: john

His style has clear hallmarks at this point, the use of a mention of something that came up in conversation as a prod to memory. I don't like that. This incredibly restrained, constrained, oversensitive protagonist who writes all kinds of bullshit into the most minor interactions. This book is not as offensive as the other, but as I told John, I can swallow magical realism that makes up a different physics but not magical realism that makes up a different sociology. The hallucinogenic descent in...more

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About Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro (カズオ・イシグロ or 石黒一雄) is a British novelist of a Japanese origin. His family moved to England in 1960. Ishiguro obtained his Bachelor's degree from University of Kent in 1978 and his Master's from the University of East Anglia's creative writing course in 1980. He became a British citizen in 1982. He now lives in London.

Ishiguro received the 1989 Man Booker prize for his third novel...more

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Trivia About When We Were Orphans

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Quotes from When We Were Orphans

“All I know is that I've wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I'd get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don't want it anymore, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become. Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow's sky. That's what I want now, and I think it's what you should want too. But it will be too late soon. We'll become too set to change. If we don't take our chance now, another may never come for either of us.” — 61 people liked it

“Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it'll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it.” — 15 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28923.When_We_Were_Orphans?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348343794l/28923.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28923.When_We_Were_Orphans?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro[/url]

When We Were Orphans

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