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Kazuo Ishiguro

Novelist and screenwriter; Nobel laureate in Literature, 2017

United Kingdom · b. 1954

British novelist, born in Nagasaki and raised in England from the age of five. His books include A Pale View of Hills, The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017.

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What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job?
I’ve been emphasising here the small and the private, because essentially that’s what my work is about. One person writing in a quiet room, trying to connect with another person, reading in another quiet – or maybe not so quiet – room. Stories can entertain, sometimes teach or argue a point. But for me the essential thing is that they communicate feelings. That they appeal to what we share as human beings across our borders and divides. There are large glamorous industries around stories; the book industry, the movie industry, the television industry, the theatre industry. But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it also feel this way to you?

Recorded Swedish Academy, Stockholm, 7 December 2017, The Nobel Foundation (nobelprize.org), 7 December 2017 source

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In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life?
The reason why so many vivid, undeniably convincing characters in novels, films and plays so often failed to touch me was because these characters didn’t connect to any of the other characters in an interesting human relationship. And immediately, this next thought came regarding my own work: What if I stopped worrying about my characters and worried instead about my relationships?

Recorded Swedish Academy, Stockholm, 7 December 2017, The Nobel Foundation (nobelprize.org), 7 December 2017 source

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