From the author of Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day
The Romans have long since departed and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. But, at least, the wars that once ravaged the country have ceased. Axl and Beatrice, a couple of elderly Britons, decide that now is the time, finally, for them to set off across this troubled land of mist and rain to find the son they have not seen for years, the son they can scarcely remember. They know they will face many hazards—some strange and otherworldly—but they cannot foresee how their journey will reveal to them the dark and forgotten corners of their love for each other. Nor can they foresee that they will be joined on their journey by a Saxon warrior, his orphan charge, and a knight—each of them, like Axl and Beatrice, lost in some way to his own past, but drawn inexorably toward the comfort, and the burden, of the fullness of a life’s memories.
Sometimes savage, sometimes mysterious, always intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel in a decade tells a luminous story about the act of forgetting and the power of memory, a resonant tale of love, vengeance, and war.
From the Hardcover edition.
A quest. The very, very brief description of Ishiguro’s latest is severely lacking of even the most basic information about what is in store for a reader. And, unless you have searched beyond this site, I’ll wager that what is found is not what you would have guessed.
Grim fantasy and a meditation on memory and how the past returns The versatile Kazuo Ishiguro has, for reasons known only to him, decided to write a fantasy set in the misty legendary British past. We are in a gloomy, frightening, uncertain, and dangerous world, some years after King Arthur died. Saxons and Britons are not actively at war, but loathe each other anyway. A mist pervades the countryside, muddling everyone’s memories.
Amazing novel; but this may not be everyone’s cuppa Brief summary and review, no spoilers.