Kazuo Ishiguro, the British author of “Remains of the Day”, has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy announced on Thursday.
Japan-born Ishiguro won the Man Booker Prize for the 1989 novel that was made into an Oscar-nominated movie. The Swedish Academy hailed his ability to reveal “the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world”.
The works of Ishiguro, who moved to Britain as a young child, often touch on memory, time and self-delusion, the Academy said.
“He is a little bit like a mix of Jane Austen, comedy of manners and Franz Kafka. If you mix this a little, not too much, you get Ishiguro in a nutshell,” said Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy.
Critics said the decision to give last year’s prize to Dylan was a snub to more deserving candidates and strayed beyond what is traditionally deemed literature.
The prize is named after dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel and has been awarded since 1901 for achievements in science, literature and peace in accordance with his will.