In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II.
Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the aftermath of that war, his memories of his youth and of the “floating world”—the nocturnal world of pleasure, entertainment, and drink—offer him both escape and redemption, even as they punish him for betraying his early promise. Indicted by society for its defeat and reviled for his past aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being.
Author
Kazuo Ishiguro
KAZUO ISHIGURO was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of five. His works of fiction have earned him many honours around the world, including the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Booker Prize. His books have been translated into over fifty languages and The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go were both made into acclaimed films. He received a knighthood in 2018 for Services to Literature. He also holds the decorations of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star from Japan. His most recent novel, Klara and the Sun was a number one Sunday Times bestseller in both hardback and paperback. Ishiguro also works occasionally as a screenwriter. His screenplay for the 2022 film Living received Academy Award (Oscar) and BAFTA nominations. Cinema adaptations of Klara and the Sun and A Pale View of Hills are due for release in 2025.
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