27 Facts About Kazuo Ishiguro

Sir Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-born British novelist, screenwriter, musician, and short-story writer.

Kazuo Ishiguro is one of the most critically-acclaimed and praised contemporary fiction authors writing in English, having been awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and moved to Britain in 1960 with his parents when he was five.

Kazuo Ishiguro thereafter explored other genres, including science fiction and historical fiction.

Kazuo Ishiguro has been nominated for the Booker Prize four times, winning the prize in 1989 for his novel The Remains of the Day, which was adapted into a film of the same name in 1993.

Kazuo Ishiguro was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the 2022 film Living.

Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, on 8 November 1954, the son of Shizuo Kazuo Ishiguro, a physical oceanographer, and his wife, Shizuko.

In 1960, Kazuo Ishiguro moved with his family to Guildford, Surrey, as his father was invited for research at the National Institute of Oceanography.

Kazuo Ishiguro did not return to visit Japan until 1989, nearly 30 years later, when he was a participant in the Japan Foundation Short-Term Visitors' Programme.

Kazuo Ishiguro, who has been described as a British Asian author, explained in a BBC interview how growing up in a Japanese family in the UK was crucial to his writing, enabling him to see things from a different perspective from that of many of his English peers.

Kazuo Ishiguro sang solos as a choirboy with his church and school choirs.

Kazuo Ishiguro enjoyed music as a teenager, listening to songs by the likes of Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and, particularly, Bob Dylan.

Kazuo Ishiguro began learning guitar and writing songs, and initially aimed to become a professional songwriter.

Kazuo Ishiguro worked as a grouse beater, a practice of driven grouse shooting, at Balmoral Castle.

Kazuo Ishiguro's thesis became his first novel, A Pale View of Hills, published in 1982.

Kazuo Ishiguro set his first two novels in Japan; however, in several interviews, he said that he has little familiarity with Japanese writing and that his works bear little resemblance to Japanese fiction.

Kazuo Ishiguro finds himself blamed by the new generation who accuse him of being part of Japan's misguided foreign policy, and is forced to confront the ideals of the modern times as represented by his grandson.

Kazuo Ishiguro's works have been compared to Salman Rushdie, Jane Austen, and Henry James, though Ishiguro himself rejects these comparisons.

In 2017, Kazuo Ishiguro was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, with the motivation "in novels of great emotional force, [he] has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".

Kazuo Ishiguro was appointed Knight Bachelor for services to literature in the 2018 Birthday Honours.

Kazuo Ishiguro adapted the screenplay for the 2022 British film Living, directed by Oliver Hermanus and starring Bill Nighy, from the 1952 Japanese film Ikiru directed by Akira Kurosawa.

Kazuo Ishiguro has co-written several songs for the jazz singer Stacey Kent with saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, Kent's husband.

Kazuo Ishiguro contributed lyrics to Kent's 2007 Grammy-nominated album Breakfast on the Morning Tram, including its title track, her 2011 album, Dreamer in Concert, her 2013 album The Changing Lights, and her 2017 album, I Know I Dream.

Kazuo Ishiguro wrote the liner notes to Kent's 2002 album In Love Again.

Kazuo Ishiguro first met Kent after he chose her recording of "They Can't Take That Away from Me" as one of his Desert Island Discs in 2002 and Kent subsequently asked him to write for her.

Kazuo Ishiguro has been married to Lorna MacDougall, a social worker, since 1986.

Kazuo Ishiguro describes himself as a "serious cinephile" and "great admirer of Bob Dylan".