현대 영미권 문학을 대표하는 작가이자 부커 상 수상작가, 2017년 노벨문학상 수상작가 가즈오 이시구로의 소설로 첼튼햄 상을 받았다. 세계적인 피아니스트가 성공을 위해 버려야 했던 가치들을 되살리려 하지만 결국 실패하고 마는 과정이 현실과 꿈, 과거와 현재와 미래의 경계가 없는 몽환적인 배경에서 펼쳐진다. 젊은 날 놓쳐 버린 것들의 소중함을 깨닫지만 다시 돌아갈 수 없다는 좌절감에 몸부림치는 주인공의 모습이, 지난날에 대한 회한을 지니고 있으면서도 그저 하루하루를 살아가는 현대인의 모습을 반영하고 있다. 초현실적인 가상의 도시를 배경으로 현대인의 쓸쓸한 자화상과 심리를 그려낸 작품이다.
Sir Kazuo Ishiguro (カズオ・イシグロ or 石黒 一雄), OBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist of Japanese origin and Nobel Laureate in Literature (2017). His family moved to England in 1960. Ishiguro obtained his Bachelor's degree from the 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.
His first novel, A Pale View of Hills, won the 1982 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. His second novel, An Artist of the Floating World, won the 1986 Whitbread Prize. Ishiguro received the 1989 Man Booker prize for his third novel The Remains of the Day. His fourth novel, The Unconsoled, won the 1995 Cheltenham Prize. His latest novel is The Buried Giant, a New York Times bestseller. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2017.
His novels An Artist of the Floating World (1986), When We Were Orphans (2000), and Never Let Me Go (2005) were all shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
In 2008, The Times ranked Ishiguro 32nd on their list of "The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945". In 2017, the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature, describing him in its citation as a writer "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".