Discover our Monthly Spotlight: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
This month we revisit the 1989 Booker Prize winner, now a contemporary classic. Explore our reading guide, read an extract, listen to our latest podcast episode, win a copy of the novel, and more
Throughout March, we’re celebrating our latest Monthly Spotlight book – The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro – a moving and bittersweet portrait of an ageing butler in post-war England; a man driven by unswerving loyalty and unable to express his deeply-suppressed emotions.
The novel won the Booker Prize in 1989 and went on to sell over two million copies. Four years later, it was adapted for film in an acclaimed production directed by James Ivory, with a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala – herself a Booker Prize winner, in 1975, for her novel Heat and Dust.
Ishiguro is one of few authors who have been nominated for the Booker Prize five times, and in 2017 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Nobel academy declared his writing to be of ‘great emotional force,’ adding that as a novelist he ‘uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world’.
This month, why not join us in reading – or re-reading – this work, which is now one of the most highly regarded 20th-century British novels. You can read an extract from The Remains of the Day here. We have also compiled a detailed guide to aid your reading of the novel, alone or as part of a book club, and you can dive into an essay by writer Max Liu, detailing how the book changed the way he thinks about England. For readers new to Ishiguro, our beginner’s guide to his entire body of work will point you in the right direction, and don’t forget to enter our competition to win a copy of the novel and a Booker Prize tote bag.
Good luck, and happy reading!
How Kazuo Ishiguro wrote The Remains of the Day in a month
In this illuminating first-person article, Kazuo Ishiguro describes the drastic four-week writing period behind his 1989 Booker Prize winner. Ishiguro cleared his diary, avoided mail and the phone, and wrote from 9am to 10.30pm six days a week. ‘I wrote free-hand, not caring about the style,’ he says, adding that there were ‘awful sentences, hideous dialogue, scenes that went nowhere’. By the end, he admits, ‘my fictional world was more real to me than the actual one’. Read more about his intense, month-long writing experience here.
Discover our reading guide to The Remains of the Day
Whether you’re new to The Remains of the Day or have read it and would like to explore it more deeply, discover more in our comprehensive guide, which includes a synopsis, character summaries, critics’ comments and a range of discussion points.
Where to start with Kazuo Ishiguro: a guide to his best books
If you haven’t read Ishiguro’s novels before, or only his best-known books, you might wonder where to go next. From unreliable narrators and heartbreaking revelations to ‘the perfect novel’, here is John Self’s detailed guide to the 1989 Booker Prize winner’s finest fiction.
The Booker Prize Podcast, Episode 35: The Remains of the Day, on screen and in print
In the final installment of our mini-series where we revisit Booker Prize novels whose adaptations were nominated for an Oscar, we take a closer look at The Remains of the Day. Tune in to hear our hosts compare the novel to its big-screen counterpart, discuss the narrative devices Ishiguro uses throughout the book and explore the character of Stevens and the ‘dignity’ that shaped his life.
Win a copy of The Remains of the Day and a Booker Prize tote bag
To celebrate our Monthly Spotlight, we are giving you the chance to win one of five bundles including a copy of the latest UK edition of The Remains of the Day, plus a limited-edition Booker Prize tote bag, which is not available to buy anywhere. This competition is open to readers across the world.
Love it! You can also read our long form review of Ishiguro’s classic here. https://latentbookclub.substack.com/p/the-remains-of-the-day-by-kazuo-ishiguro - one of the best books we looked at last year.
Thanks a million for this gem 💎💕📚💕💎