Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved with his family to England at age 5. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Kent in 1978, then a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Among various jobs he undertook while studying was that of a grouse-beater (someone who assists the hunt for grouse [a type of bird] by driving them towards hunters using flags, stick, etc) for the Queen Mother in Balmoral, Scotland.

Ishiguro was mentored by famed writer Angela Carter and began writing full time in 1982. Among Ishiguro’s published works are a collection of short stories in 1981, his first novel A Pale View of Hills in 1982, and An Artist of the Floating World in 1986 for which he was shortlisted for the 1986 Booker Prize and won the 1986 Whitbread Book of the Year Award. His third novel The Remains of the Day was published in 1989 and won the Booker Prize, and was later adapted into an acclaimed film and radio broadcast on the BBC. Other works by Ishiguro include the novels The Unconsoled in 1995, When We Were Orphans in 2000, Never Let Me Go in 2005, and various screenplays.

Ishiguro has conveyed that his inspiration for writing An Artist of the Floating World came from his first novel, in which an old teacher is required to rediscover and invent his own morals. It is a fictional reflection of Ishiguro’s own sense of Japanese identity and presented through a youthful reconstruction of Japan. Ishiguro’s own journey of rediscovery from youth to adulthood, including relocating countries and the struggle to adapt, is influential to the global lens through which he explores his heritage. He furthers this discovery in Never Let Me Go, going well beyond the cloning debate and posing questions about the steady erosion of hope through accepting tradition or heritage without question. Ideas of repressing what one knows, that people fail one another, grow old and fall to pieces, and that while you must keep calm, keeping calm will not change a thing, are all explored. In Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro challenges the reader to view human clones as more than their past and equally alive, determined and conscious as humans.

Kazuo Ishiguro currently resides in London with his wife and daughter.