Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro (Image: AFP Relaxnews)
The literature of Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro is growing in popularity, especially in his native Japan
The Japanese publisher of Nagasaki-born Kazuo Ishiguro said Friday it would republish eight of the British author’s books in translation, reporting “a huge number of orders” after he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Ishiguro left Japan when he was five and moved to Britain, only to visit his native country three decades later as an adult. Japan had pinned its hopes on its best-known novelist Haruki Murakami to win the Nobel Prize, but eagerly claimed a link to the British winner with Japanese roots.
“We have received a huge number of orders since last night. We are very happy,” a spokeswoman for Ishiguro’s Japanese publishing house Hayakawa told AFP. “We have decided to reprint the eight works we have already published in Japanese,” she said.
Ishiguro’s most famous novel, The Remains of the Day, is one of the works translated into Japanese. Japanese media showed images of nightly bookstores frantically digging out their scarce stocks of Ishiguro works and placing them above Murakami books. Government spokesman Yoshihide Suga told reporters on Friday that Japan congratulated its native son “from the bottom of its heart”. “His novels are also read by many Japanese and they have been turned into a play and a TV drama,” says Suga.
Nagasaki Mayor Hodo Nakamura also congratulated Ishiguro, saying it was a “great honor” for his city.
His first novel, A pale view of hills from 1982, and his subsequent work, An artist of the floating world from 1986, take place in Nagasaki a few years after the Second World War.