Kazuo Ishiguro’s contemporary relevance in a changing, fast-paced world

On the eve of the writer’s 70th birthday, reading his books, which resonate with themes around questions of identity, memory, and a sense of the self contrasted with the passing of time. In his tilt toward sci-fi too, Ishiguro unravels ‘the abyss’ lurking in the world

A re-worked stage adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2000 novel Never Let Me Go, based on a script by Suzanne Heathcote, was running at the Rose Theatre, Kingston, London till the beginning of October. Parallelly, a movie adaptation of Ishiguro’s debut novel published in 1982, A Pale View of Hills, is currently in the works and set to be released next year. Having dabbled in song as well as scriptwriting (he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for the film Living in 2022 ), the Japanese-British novelist, who turns 70 on November 8, and with a literary career spanning four decades, still remains relevant as ever.

Identity and sense of self

Ishiguro’s first two novels, A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World (1986), were set in Japan, post the Second World War.

However, Ishiguro himself has not lived in Japan as an adult. His parents moved from Nagasaki to Surrey, England when he was seven and he considers himself ‘thoroughly English’. The Japan he knows is the Japan in ‘his mind’, he had once remarked. It was perhaps this feeling and anxiety to not be type-set as a Japanese author, that his next novel, which won him the Booker Prize in 1989, The Remains of the Day, was set in the English countryside.

Early in his career, Ishiguro had been called a ‘repetitive genius’. Although set in different contexts, Ishiguro’s themes in all three novels remain around questions of identity, memory, and a sense of the self contrasted with the passing of time. In An Artist of the Floating World, we see a renowned, aging painter contemplate on his life and choices as an avid promoter of the pro-military Japanese government during the war. Caught in a time where his choices are being seen as the reason for a nation’s downfall, the painter violently defends himself yet struggles to understand what went wrong.

Similarly in The Remains of the Day, Stevens, a loyal butler to an old English house and lord, violently defends his employer who sympathised with Nazi-Germany before a full-scale war broke out. Again caught in a time where his values and morals are considered factors to be ashamed of, Stevens finds it hard to understand how time has proved him and his master so very wrong. In a 2012 review of The Remains of the Day in The Guardian, Salman Rushdie who had earlier praised the novel as Ishiguro’s masterpiece, described Stevens as, “a man destroyed by the ideas upon which he has built his life”.

However, Ishiguro’s characters do not rebel against their obsolescence. They might question, even lament, but inevitably they accept. When Stevens, the ever-faithful butler, realises he has lived out his life in service of a Nazi sympathiser and sabotaged any chance at happiness, he says quite gently, breaking the matter-of-fact rhythm of the novel, “Indeed — why should I not admit it? — at that moment, my heart was breaking.” It is this sudden raw emotion that makes Ishiguro the writer that he is. The Nobel Prize Committee said it best while awarding him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017: Kazuo Ishiguro “in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”

Science fiction?

The first three novels of Ishiguro are similar to each other in theme and style. He later remarked, “You could say I’d rewritten the same novel three times”. Thereafter, he sways ever-so slightly and enters the landscape of science fiction with Never Let Me Go (2000). However, his focus is on the emotive and not on the technical know-how of the world he builds.

Through Never Let Me Go, we enter a Britain which is not a dystopia but is not real either. It is set somewhere in a time which never existed, yet is commonplace and familiar to any Englishman. Kathy. H, Ruth, and Tommy grow up together in a boarding school at Hailsham; but there is a sinister backstory — these children are ‘clones’, brought up so that they can donate their organs to ‘real’ humans. The achingly tragic novel chronicles the story of the children and later adults whose entire lives have been written for them before they were even born. Yet we do not see rebellion or anger or a sense of betrayal. Just sadness and a quiet acceptance. Even an attempt at escape by Tommy and Kathy. H is within the bounds of the accepted.

Klara and the Sun, Ishiguro’s newest novel published in 2021, is set in a dystopic future. Klara, a humanoid robot referred to as an AF (Artificial Friend), powered by solar energy, is designed to keep pre-teens and toddlers company.

As with Never Let Me Go, the Nobel laureate’s latest novel also dwells on questions of identity formation and what it means to be human.

As she is made of wires and metal, Klara cannot feel or know. Her language and thoughts do not leave their machine-like tendencies. They are stilted and short and straight to the point. Yet how does the reader make sense of Klara’s selfless ‘love’ for Josie? Her ‘faith’ in the sun from which she derives energy? Is she not human in her ability to give and believe?

These questions are briefly confronted head-on when Tommy and Kathy. H go looking for their old boarding school headmistress in Never Let Me Go. Do education and good bearing not make for a human? How about the ability to love, and feel other emotions? Klara’s faithfulness is rewarded with her being disposed of. Is she not angry? No, after all, she is a robot. But is the reader angry? Should the reader be?

Ishiguro’s genius thus lies in being able to metamorphose themes and place them in new contexts thus giving the reader different perspectives. Questions of being left behind, being ‘disposable’, and growing obsolete in a fast-paced world run deep in his novels. Every new novel of his while being new, fresh, and achingly raw is also familiar in their emotions. It is as if we are experiencing the same emotional force repackaged through different characters and settings.

Published - November 07, 2024 08:30 am IST