British Author Wins 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature

Vanessa Obioha

62 year-old Kazuo Ishiguro emerged winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature. The committee described him as a writer of great integrity whose creative works uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.

His most successful book is ‘The Remains of the Day’, a gripping novel that mirrored the enigmatic life of a butler who was in charge of an English manor house. Themes like loyalty, love, dignity and legacy were explored in the book which was later adapted to the silver screen. The film which featured Anthony Hopkins would later earn an Academy award nomination as well as win the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1989.

Other fictional works that have earned the author laurels include ‘Never Let Me Go’ published in 2005 and his latest novel ‘The Buried Giant’ published two years ago.

Originally from Japan, Ishiguro moved to Britain when he was five years old. He studied English and Philosophy at the University of Kent in England in the 1970s. He later studied creative writing at the University of East Anglia. He launched his literary career in 1982 when he published his first book, ‘A Pale View of Hills’.

He described his win as “a magnificent honour, mainly because it means that I’m in the footsteps of the greatest authors that have lived. The world is in a very uncertain moment and I would hope all the Nobel prizes would be a force for something positive in the world as it is at the moment,” he said. “I’ll be deeply moved if I could in some way be part of some sort of climate this year in contributing to some sort of positive atmosphere at a very uncertain time.”

Ishiguro is the 114th winner of the Nobel Prize In Literature.

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