KS5 LRC Book Recommendation - The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro

By the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go.

Ryder, a renowned pianist, arrives in a Central European city he cannot identify for a concert he cannot remember agreeing to give. But then as he traverses a landscape by turns eerie and comical - and always strangely malleable, as a dream might be - he comes steadily to realise he is facing the most crucial performance of his life. 

Ishiguro's extraordinary and original study of a man whose life has accelerated beyond his control was met on publication by consternation, vilification - and the highest praise.

About Kazuo Ishiguro

Recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nagasaki-born Kazuo Ishiguro’s writing career began with 1982’s acclaimed novel A Pale View of Hills. His third book, 1989’s The Remains of the Day, firmly secured his reputation as a writer with an unparalleled control of character and nuance; its standing was later confirmed by winning the Booker Prize for that year.

If anything, Ishiguro’s reputation has only grown over the years, scoring another triumph in 2005 with his dystopian masterwork Never Let Me Go which was again shortlisted for the Man Booker; to date, Ishiguro has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize four times. 

Recently drawing plaudits once again for his recent, extraordinary fantasy parable The Buried Giant, the Swedish Nobel Prize Academy praised Ishiguro as a writer "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".