British author Kazuo Ishiguro, best known for his novel The Remains of the Day, won the Nobel literature Prize on Thursday, the Swedish Academy said.
The 62-year-old, “In novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world,” the Academy wrote in its citation.
Ishiguro has written eight books as well as scripts for film and television. He won the Man Booker Prize in 1989 for The Remains of the Day.
Born in Nagasaki, he moved to Britain with his family when he was five years old, only returning to visit Japan as an adult.
Both his first novel A Pale View of Hills from 1982 and the subsequent one, An Artist of the Floating World from 1986, take place in Nagasaki a few years after World War II.
“The themes Ishiguro is most associated with are already present here: memory, time, and self-delusion,” the Academy said.
“This is particularly notable in his most renowned novel, The Remains of the Day,” which was turned into a film with Anthony Hopkins acting as the duty-obsessed butler Stevens. “Ishiguro’s writings are marked by a carefully restrained mode of expression, independent of whatever events are taking place,” it said.