Introduction: ‘This is the way it feels to me’: the writings of Kazuo Ishiguro – Kristian Shaw and Peter Sloane
1 Diaspora, trauma, spectrality and world literary writing in A Pale View of Hills – Emily Horton
2 Eloquence and empathy in A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World – Cynthia F. Wong
3 Ishiguro's tempered presentational realism and practice – Rebecca Karni
4 ‘An inevitable course’: political responsibility in The Remains of the Day – Sara Upstone
5 Klara in the junkyard: on loneliness in The Unconsoled – Bruce Robbins
6 Novel dysfunction in When We Were Orphans – Andrew Bennett
7 Empathy and the ethics of posthuman reading in Never Let Me Go – Peter Sloane
8 Nocturnes, hope, and ‘that croony nostalgia music’ – Yugin Teo
9 Disinterring the English sublime: haunted atmospherics in The Buried Giant – Kristian Shaw
10 Klara and the humans: agency, Hannah Arendt and forgiveness – Robert Eaglestone
11 Kazuo Ishiguro’s film and TV scriptwriting – Anni Shen
Afterword – Sebastian Groes
Index

This extensive edited collection is devoted to the work of the 2017 Nobel Literature Laureate, Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, featuring contributions from the most established Ishiguro scholars. It contains major new essays on each of his novels, including the first published essay on Klara and the Sun, as well as his short story collection Nocturnes, and his screenplays. Situating Ishiguro’s work within current debates regarding modernism, postmodernism and postcolonialism, the essays examine his engagement with the defining concerns of the contemporary novel, including national identity, Britishness, cosmopolitanism, memory, biotechnology, terrorism, Brexit, immigration and populist politics. Discussing Ishiguro both as a British and global author, this book contributes to debates regarding the politics of publishing of ethnic writers, examining how Ishiguro has managed to shape a career in resistance to narrow labelling where many other writers have struggled to achieve long-term recognition.

The Introduction examines Ishiguro’s body of work as a whole and Ishiguro’s evolving literary reputation in light of his recent personal and commercial success. The book then offers individual essays on each of Ishiguro’s novels, his short story collection, his television and film work, as well as his recent journalistic interventions. Each essay extends and updates existing criticism on Ishiguro via engagement with the most up-to-date critical frameworks, while at the same time staying true to each text’s most prominent thematic concerns.

With prominent contributors and comprehensive coverage, this will be the definitive volume of Ishiguro scholarship for years to come.