Kazuo Ishiguro wins 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature
Today the Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm. Kazuo Ishiguro, a British novelist born in Japan, is the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature. For Penguin Random House, Ishiguro is the fourth recipient of this prize, the most important literary honor in the world, since the publishing group was founded in 2013. Its imprints publish Ishiguro's works in places including the U.S., Canada, and Brazil while Verlagsgruppe Random House is his publisher in Germany. Ishiguro’s best-known novel is “The Remains of the Day.” “The Buried Giant” is his most recent book.
The life of Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Japan in November 1954 and lived there until 1960, when his fami-ly moved to the U.K., where he grew up. Ishiguro studied English and philosophy, and later attended Malcolm Bradbury’s "Creative Writing Course" at the University of East Anglia, Nor-wich, where he earned his M.A. in Literature in 1980. Ishiguro wrote his first short stories dur-ing this time. They were of such high quality that all of them were published and he received a contract for his first novel before the manuscript was even finished.
Ishiguro lives in London with his wife and daughter. The author has won many awards; at home in Britain, they include the Whitbread Award and the Booker Prize. His works have been translated into more than 40 languages. Ishiguro's most famous novel is “The Remains of the Day,” a story about England in the transition to the post-colonial era that was adapted into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. His most recent book is “The Buried Giant.”
About Kazuo Ishiguro
Sonny Mehta, Chairman & Editor in Chief at Knopf, who has accompanied Ishiguro profes-sionally for over 30 years and publishes his books in the U.S., said about “The Buried Giant”: “I read this book with astonishment and admiration. He’s never written the same kind of book. Each book has been a total departure. And yet again, he’s written a genre-bending novel.” Asked in an installment of the BENET series “Book Talk” about the elements of the novel that would resonate most powerfully with Ishiguro’s longtime fans, the publisher said: “The themes that have always absorbed him in each book: memory, love, history. Big subjects, but he’s al-ways found a way to make them at once personal and universal, which is why they exert a pull on so many different characters in so many different contexts–and I expect, similarly, will strike a chord with all sorts of readers.”
With a view to the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Kazuo Ishiguro, Mehta added: ““I’ve always thought that Ish is an amazing writer. The breadth of his work as a novelist is astonishing. We’ve had the good fortune of being his publisher since THE REMAINS OF THE DAY, a book that readers around the world have come to cherish. This acknowledgment from the Swedish academy is the most wonderful news, and a very happy occasion for all of us at Knopf and Vintage, and indeed, everyone at Penguin Random House worldwide.”
In addition to Knopf and Vintage in the U.S., Ishiguro's works are published by Knopf Canada and in Brazil by Companhia das Letras, another Penguin Random House publisher. In Germa-ny, Ishiguro's books are published by Blessing and Heyne, two Verlagsgruppe Random House imprints. German publisher Ulrich Genzler said: “Congratulations to our author Kazuo Ishiguro on this richly deserved acknowledgement of his life's work. He is a brilliant storyteller, and his central themes of remembrance, the search for identity, and collective repression are of the most pressing topicality.”
And Louise Dennys, Executive Publisher and EVP bei Penguin Random House Canada, who has been Ishiguro’s publisher and editor since 1988, said: “All of us here at Knopf and Vintage Canada are—might I say—over the moon and overjoyed by The Nobel’s selection of Kazuo Ishiguro for the Nobel Prize in Literature. I can genuinely say that there are few writers as be-loved in the world as Ish, as we call him fondly. In his great novels and his short stories, he has written with transcendent, luminous understanding of what it means to be our best selves, the poignancy of memory, the heartbreaking legacies of the past and the perils of the future, and the profound, inexplicable depths of love. His writing is both of our time and timeless.”
