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British novelist Ishiguro receives Nobel Prize in literature
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British author and Nobel Prize in Literature 2017 laureate Kazuo Ishiguro delivers his Banquet Speech at the 2017 Nobel Prize banquet at the Stockholm City Hall on December 10, 2017. (AFP/Jonathan Nackstrand)
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apan-born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, author of the 1989 Man Booker Prize-winning "The Remains of the Day," received the 2017 Nobel Prize in literature Sunday.
Ishiguro, 63, accepted a medal and a diploma from Sweden's King Carl XVI Gustaf at a ceremony in Stockholm. In selecting Ishiguro, the Swedish Academy said the author, "in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world."
His novels are most associated with memory, time and self-delusion, the academy said.
Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki and moved to Britain with his family when he was 5. He has said his connection with Japan, through relatives and his own early memories of his native country, led him to write about Japan.
His 1982 debut novel "A Pale View of Hills," depicts a woman from Nagasaki reflecting on her life and the aftermath of the city's atomic bombing.
He followed the effort with "An Artist of the Floating World" in 1986, narrated by an aging Japanese painter taking stock of his life and career a few years after the end of the war.
Read also: Kazuo Ishiguro: Social worker turned Nobel Prize Winner
"The Remains of the Day," which depicts a butler in postwar Britain who recalls his time serving his aristocratic master, was made into a film in 1993 with Academy Award-winning Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins in the role of the duty-obsessed butler Stevens.
Other notable works include the 2005 dystopian science fiction novel "Never Let Me Go," an international bestseller that was also adapted into a film in 2010. It describes a group of clones being raised for their organs.
Ishiguro's most recent novel, "The Buried Giant," was published in 2015.
Ahead of the ceremony, Ishiguro stressed the importance of literature in an increasingly divided world, saying, "Good writing and good reading will break down barriers" during a Nobel lecture at the academy on Thursday.
Ishiguro became the third Japanese-born writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature following Yasunari Kawabata in 1968 and Kenzaburo Oe in 1994.
