One morning in late September, the author, who was studying in Beijing alone, woke up and felt an inexplicable loneliness. Suddenly, he recalled the work "Don't Let Me Go" that Ishiguro had read many years ago, and couldn't help but burst into tears...

Ishiguro Kazuo (Wikipedia)

Reference News Network reported on October 11th on One morning in late September, the author, who was studying in Beijing alone, woke up and felt an inexplicable loneliness. Suddenly, he recalled the work " Don't Let Me Go " that he had read many years ago, and couldn't help but burst into tears...

Ishiguro Kazuo is this way. His novels were so refreshing that it was still memorable after many years.

htmlOn October 5, I learned that Ishiguro Kazuo won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, I was delighted and felt that the joy brought by reading his works could be shared with more people. After four years, I revisited his classic works as if I was talking to a confidant.

This is the main work of Ishiguro Kazuo, announced on the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, Stockholm, the capital of Sweden on October 5. (Photo by Shi Tiansheng, Xinhua News Agency)

"Internationalist writer" who focuses on immigration identities

Ishiguro Kazuo was born in Japan and moved to the UK with his parents at the age of 6. Both parents are Japanese, and my father grew up in Shanghai, China. Ishiguro Kazuo received a pure British education and wrote in English, but the subject matter has not been forgotten in East Asia. Of the seven works he has written so far, two of them took place in Japan and one in Shanghai.

He joked about himself as "a writer who doesn't know where his home is." The novel story takes place anywhere in the world. His universal values, the concept of coexistence of civilization and the courage to be moved by the people of the world have enabled him to transcend the limitations of national boundaries and territories. He is more willing to be an "internationalist writer." His language is concise and elegant, and there is no obstacle to translation. His works have been translated into 27 languages, "his home is everywhere."

Ishiguro Kazuo had already enjoyed a high status in the British literary world before winning the Nobel Prize. He, together with Naipaul and Rushdie, was known as the "Three Immigration in the British literary world". His work " Long Day Trace " won the Booker International Literature Award and was adapted into a movie to cause a sensation. He also received three Booker Award nominations and numerous other awards.

The most wonderful thing about Ishiguro Kazuo is that every work is unique. Trying to define Ishiguro Kazuo with a clear framework and style is quite difficult. Every work of his has new attempts and is full of experimental flavor. It is always worth your expectations. He will surprise you with his next work.

Interestingly, Ishiguro Kazuo did not entangle "the wandering and helplessness of multiple identities of immigrants" throughout each work and all the written narratives. On the contrary, he acted very British when writing about England. The butler in "The Long Day Trace" has a genuine British style.

Whether it is choosing to write about the subject of the most representative male housekeeper in British society, or the protagonist's tone of speech, they are filled with a decline of imperialism; he was very Japanese when he wrote about Japan. "The Ukiyo-E" wrote about a process of admitting mistakes experienced by a well-known painter who painted propaganda posters in the war, and the characters' thinking habits and even speaking logic were completely Japanese; he did not feel alienated at all when he wrote about Shanghai. " Shanghai Orphan " can make people feel the atmosphere of old Shanghai in the early 20th century. His talent easily and freely controls different regional cultures, trying to make his works meaningful in any cultural context. His language logic and expression style span a lot. He swims in the kingdom of freedom, like a child who is tired of the new and old.

Ishiguro Kazuo uses Takashi's experience to reveal his own feelings about immigration in "Shanghai Orphan". Zhe is a Japanese. He lives in the Shanghai foreign concession in the early 20th century with his parents. During this period, Zhe briefly returned to Japan to live. Zhe felt that everyone around him was laughing at him, so he vowed not to go back to Japan. The protagonist Banks is a British man living in Shanghai. He wants to learn more British. His uncle told him: "I think it is absolutely not a bad thing for boys like you to have both characteristics in various countries when they grow up. In that case, we will treat each other better." Banks and Zhe finally sighed: Shanghai's foreign concession is our only home.

Immigration will appear different from the people around you in every place, sometimes misplaced, but being different from others may not be a bad thing. When Ishiguro Kazuo pays attention to the dislocation of immigration status, he often makes the protagonist stick to his values ​​and principles, which is thought-provoking. After the announcement of the announcement of Kazuo Ishiguro's award, a large number of journalists flocked to his home in North London. (AFP)

"The directness of life experience is valuable"

delicately expresses the most common emotions, lamenting the ephemeral and fragile life, shouldering irresistible responsibilities and missions... Ishiguro's works have gone from showing a minority attitude to paying attention to the fate of all mankind later, which is quite in line with the Nobel Prize selection criteria.

Chen Xiaoming, director of the Chinese Department of Peking University, said: "The directness of life experience in Ishiguro's works is valuable."

This is also the reason why the author is obsessed with "Don't Let Me Go".

"Don't Let Me Go" has created a group of clones in a science fiction method. Their "mission" that was artificially created is to "grow up as donors for organ transplantation." The story takes place at the Helsham Boarding School in England. There is a mysterious atmosphere here. Children are "who are told but not really told" about their mission. "Should they know the truth of their mission in childhood?" Educators have different differences. Concealment can give them a good childhood, but deception is not a good quality. The three children, Cathy, Ruth and Tommy, grew up slowly in a vague way. They had dreams, jealousy, love triangles, and "special people" had "normal human emotions". In their limited years, poetry and painting were strongly encouraged because art can show a person's soul. No matter how short a life is, it needs to use to show the meaning of existence. The story sets up a lot of suspense, attracting you to enter their lives step by step. Can they actually control their destiny? Is there still hope in their love?

This story makes people cry. They are only in their thirties, and their destined trajectory is actually a microcosm of everyone's life? Life is like morning dew, and death is the only ending. Faced with an irresistible mission, can you control your future?

Ishiguro Kazuo will also make you think about what true love is. There is a storyline in "Don't Let Me Go": They heard a saying that if two people can prove that they love each other, they can apply for an extension of "providing organs". But how to prove love?

True love is not a "form of being together", love is the most indescribable subtle emotion. Ishiguro Kazuo has a meticulous psychological portrayal of love in many works. In the lover, there is no cover or pretending. True love is a place where mutual appreciation and encouragement, mutual understanding, and a resting place for the soul.

The most precious part of life experience is actually to experience love, being loved, and experiencing the entanglement and bound of the living body and another living body to breathe and vibrate, as well as the two bound living bodies experience the interaction with the outside world.

Novel "Don't Let Me Go" movie poster of the same name

"very upright" and full of mission writer

Ishiguro Kazuo's works show a typical sense of tragedy in Western literature, revealing the helplessness and settlement arranged by an unknown fate. His style is quiet and forbearing, implicit and timeless.

Delicate tenderness, restrained sorrow, and the relief that things come in line with each other. Ishiguro Kazuo uses his unique narrative method to direct life, love, memory, redemption, and universal values, subverting the readers' usual reading experience.

The meticulous butler in "Let's traces on the long sun", his mission is to serve his master with absolute loyalty and not have his own preferences and opinions. There are cowboys in the United States, samurai in Japan, tuts fighters in Spain, and England has butlers who best represent their social and cultural characteristics. The butler maintains his ultimate professionalism and dignity like a gentleman. When the butler wanted to make a choice between the mission he shouldered and the unexpected love, he chose the mission without hesitation and gave up love.

The well-known detective Banks in England is an orphan ("Shanghai Orphan"), and his mission is to find and save his parents.When he was young, he even believed that completing his mission could save Shanghai and avoid world wars. However, as the truth was revealed step by step, he gradually realized that his strength was insignificant. Between completing his mission and his lover, he also chose the responsibility to follow the arrangements of fate.

Ishiguro Kazuo's exquisite conception is exciting, but the results are always unexpected. His protagonist was pushed forward by the tide of fate that was rushing to where he was. The sense of mission makes them become ascetic monks. When the sense of mission conflicts with true love, they choose the former sadly.

The Nobel Prize Committee praised his recent work, the 2015 publication of The Buried Giant, saying that the book digs out "the relationship between memory and forgetting and modern history, the relationship between fantasy and reality."

"You mix Jane Austen with Franz Kafka and you can see Ishiguro Kazuo - but you have to add some Marcel Proust and stir it up, but don't go too far, you'll see his work." Sara Danius, executive secretary of the Swedish Academy of Literature.

Danius said that Ishiguro Kazuo is a "very upright" writer, "he has pioneered his own aesthetic system."

clockwise are Ishiguro's works "Don't Let Me Go", " No Consolation ", "Leave Traces in the Day", and "Nocturnes". (Photo provided by Cui Ying)