Books: An Artist of the Floating World

In An Artist of the Floating World, Kazuo Ishiguro offers readers of the English language an authentic look at post-war Japan, "a floating world" of changing cultural behaviours, shifting societal patterns and troubling questions. Ishiguro, who was born in Nagasaki in 1954 but moved to England in 1960, writes the story of Masuji Ono, a bohemian artist and purveyor of the nightlife who became a propagandist for Japanese imperialism during the war. But the war is over. Japan lost, Ono's wife and son have been killed, and many young people blame the imperialists for leading the country to disaster. What's left for Ono? Ishiguro's treatment of this story earned a 1986 Whitbread Prize.

Books

An Artist of the Floating World was added to Faber and Faber's profile