Author Guide · Literary Fiction
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In the summer of 1987 Kazuo Ishiguro cleared his diary for four weeks and called it the Crash. He wrote from 9am to 10.30pm, Monday to Saturday, with an hour for lunch and two for dinner; he did not open his post or go near the phone, and his wife Lorna took over his share of the cooking and housework. At the end of it he had more or less the whole of The Remains of the Day, which won the Booker Prize in 1989. Born in Nagasaki in 1954 and brought to Surrey at five, he writes only in English, and in 2017 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. This guide covers his nine key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 9 key books · 1982–2021 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Kazuo Ishiguro has published eight novels and one story collection, from A Pale View of Hills (1982) to Klara and the Sun (2021), plus a book of song lyrics (2024). His best-known books are The Remains of the Day (1989), which won the Booker Prize, and Never Let Me Go (2005). Start with The Remains of the Day. A ninth novel, Miss Lambert Steps Aboard Danger, is announced for 9 March 2027, and Taika Waititi’s film of Klara and the Sun opens in October 2026.
Where to Start with Kazuo Ishiguro
If you want his defining book
→ The Remains of the Day (1989) — the butler, the country house and the Booker Prize.
If you want his most widely read book
→ Never Let Me Go (2005) — three friends from an English boarding school with unusual rules.
If you want the early novels set in Japan
→ An Artist of the Floating World (1986) — a painter looking back on his wartime work.
If you want something shorter
→ Nocturnes (2009) — five linked stories about musicians.
9 Kazuo Ishiguro Books, in Order
A Pale View of Hills
Etsuko, a Japanese widow living in England, is visited by her younger daughter Niki after her elder daughter Keiko has taken her own life. She keeps returning to a summer in postwar Nagasaki and her friendship with Sachiko and Sachiko’s daughter Mariko, and the two stories start to bleed into each other. It won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. Kei Ishikawa’s film of the novel, with Ishiguro as executive producer, premiered at Cannes in May 2025.
An Artist of the Floating World
Masuji Ono, a retired painter in a Japanese city in the years after the Second World War, negotiates his younger daughter Noriko’s marriage and slowly circles the question of what his work for the imperialist cause did. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted as a Japanese television film in 2019.
The Remains of the Day
In the summer of 1956 Stevens, the butler of Darlington Hall, takes a motoring trip to the West Country to see Miss Kenton, the housekeeper he worked beside for years. On the way he looks back on his service to Lord Darlington, who worked for appeasement with Nazi Germany before the war, and on everything he never said. The 1993 Merchant Ivory film starred Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.
The Unconsoled
Ryder, a celebrated pianist, arrives in an unnamed Central European city to give a concert and spends three days unable to keep a single appointment. Rooms open onto his childhood, strangers turn out to be his own family, and everyone expects something of him he cannot remember agreeing to. It is his longest novel, at more than 500 pages, and divided critics when it came out.
When We Were Orphans
Christopher Banks, a famous London detective, grew up in the International Settlement in Shanghai, where both his parents vanished when he was a boy. In 1937, with the city at war, he goes back to solve the case, convinced that finding them will set things right. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Never Let Me Go
Kathy H., 31, looks back on her years with Ruth and Tommy at Hailsham, an English boarding school where the pupils were told they were special, and on what they were being raised for. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, it was filmed in 2010 by Mark Romanek from a screenplay by Alex Garland, with Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley, and made into a Japanese television series in 2016.
Nocturnes
Five linked stories about musicians, mostly past their best chance: a café guitarist in Venice who meets an ageing American crooner, a man sent to rescue an old friend’s failing marriage, a saxophonist recovering from cosmetic surgery in a Beverly Hills hotel, a songwriter playing at his sister’s café in the Malvern Hills, a young cellist in Venice and a mentor with a secret. His only story collection.
The Buried Giant
Axl and Beatrice, an elderly Briton couple in the years after King Arthur’s death, set out to find a son they can barely remember. A mist that takes away memory covers the land; they travel with a Saxon warrior, Wistan, and meet an old Sir Gawain, who is guarding the she-dragon whose breath causes it. His first novel in ten years.
Klara and the Sun
Klara is an Artificial Friend, a solar-powered robot companion, who watches the street from a shop window until she is bought for Josie, a girl who is often ill. She tries to understand the family from the outside and comes to believe that the Sun can be asked to help. His first novel after the Nobel Prize, longlisted for the Booker Prize; Taika Waititi’s film, with Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams, is due in October 2026.
In What Order to Read Kazuo Ishiguro
There is no series, no recurring character and no shared world in Ishiguro’s books, so you can read them in any order. Publication order does show a change, though: the first two novels are set in postwar Japan and stay close to realism, and from The Unconsoled on he borrows a different genre almost every time, the dream, the detective story, the boarding-school novel, the Arthurian quest, the robot narrator.
A good first sequence is The Remains of the Day, then Never Let Me Go, then An Artist of the Floating World. Leave The Unconsoled until you know how he works: at more than 500 pages of dream logic, it is the book most likely to put a new reader off.
A reading path
1. The Remains of the Day (1989)
2. Never Let Me Go (2005)
3. An Artist of the Floating World (1986)
4. Klara and the Sun (2021)
5. The Unconsoled (1995)
Everything Else Kazuo Ishiguro Published
Beyond the 9 key books: 12 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Song lyrics and the next novel
2
2 books · 2024–2027
- 2024The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain: Lyrics for Stacey Kent16 lyrics written for the jazz singer from 2007 on, illustrated by Bianca Bagnarelli
- 2027Miss Lambert Steps Aboard Dangernovel announced by Faber and Knopf for 9 March 2027: London, 1938, a music hall matinee and a train to Scotland
Uncollected short stories
5
5 books · 1981–2001
- 1981A Strange and Sometimes Sadness, Waiting for J. and Getting Poisonedthree stories in the anthology Introduction 7: Stories by New Writers
- 1983A Family Supperin the anthology Firebird 2
- 1983The Summer After the Warin Granta 7
- 1985October 1948in Granta 17
- 2001A Village After Darkin The New Yorker
Screenplays
5
5 books · 1984–2022
- 1984A Profile of Arthur J. Masontelevision film for Channel 4
- 1987The Gourmettelevision film for Channel 4
- 2003The Saddest Music in the Worldfrom his original screenplay; directed by Guy Maddin
- 2005The White Countessdirected by James Ivory
- 2022Livingfrom Kurosawa’s Ikiru, with Bill Nighy; Oscar-nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay
The years · 1954–2026
Quick facts about Kazuo Ishiguro
- Known for
- Novels narrated by people who cannot quite say what they mean, above all the butler Stevens in The Remains of the Day and Kathy H. in Never Let Me Go.
- 1954
- Born in Nagasaki, Japan
- 2005
- Never Let Me Go
- 2017
- Nobel Prize in Literature
- 2026
- Waititi’s film of Klara and the Sun
- Born
- 8 November 1954, Nagasaki, Japan
- Moved to England
- April 1960, aged five, when his father, an oceanographer, took a post at the National Institute of Oceanography; the family settled in Guildford, Surrey
- Education
- University of Kent (English and Philosophy, 1978); MA in Creative Writing, University of East Anglia (1980)
- Prizes
- Booker Prize (1989); Nobel Prize in Literature (2017), for novels “of great emotional force”
- Honours
- OBE (1995); knighted for services to literature (2018)
- Family
- Married Lorna MacDougall in 1986; their daughter Naomi Ishiguro is also a novelist
- Lives
- Golders Green, north London
The red mark is 1989: The Remains of the Day, which won the Booker Prize.
How Kazuo Ishiguro Writes: The Narrator Who Will Not Say It
Nearly every Ishiguro book is told in the first person by someone who stops short of the thing that matters. Stevens describes Lord Darlington’s meetings with German officials in the same even tone he uses for polishing silver; Kathy H. talks about the end of her own life as if reporting the weather; Masuji Ono keeps insisting his influence was smaller than it was. The reader works out what the narrator will not say, and most of the feeling in the books sits in that gap.
The prose is plain and formal, and feelings are rarely named outright: you learn about a character from what they notice, what they mention twice and where they change the subject. The subject has barely changed in forty years, memory and what people and countries choose to forget, but the setting does: postwar Japan, an English country house, a dream city, a boarding school, Arthurian Britain, a near future seen through the eyes of a robot.
He wrote songs before he wrote fiction, from the age of fifteen, and since 2007 he has written lyrics for the jazz singer Stacey Kent with her husband, the saxophonist Jim Tomlinson; a song, like his novels, has one voice and no room for explanation. For writers who work in the same quiet register, see Authors like Kazuo Ishiguro.
Watch
Kazuo Ishiguro: the official Nobel interview
Ishiguro’s official interview for the Nobel Prize in 2017, in which he talks about his work and about winning the prize.
Frequently asked questions about Kazuo Ishiguro’s books
How many books has Kazuo Ishiguro written?
Ten: eight novels, one story collection and one book of song lyrics. The nine works of fiction are on this page, from A Pale View of Hills (1982) to Klara and the Sun (2021); the lyrics book, The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain (2024), is listed under Everything Else. A ninth novel, Miss Lambert Steps Aboard Danger, is announced for 9 March 2027.
What are Kazuo Ishiguro’s books in order?
A Pale View of Hills (1982), An Artist of the Floating World (1986), The Remains of the Day (1989), The Unconsoled (1995), When We Were Orphans (2000), Never Let Me Go (2005), Nocturnes (2009, stories), The Buried Giant (2015) and Klara and the Sun (2021), followed by the lyrics book The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain (2024).
Which Kazuo Ishiguro book should I read first?
The Remains of the Day (1989). It won the Booker Prize, it is short, and it shows more clearly than any of his other books what he does with a narrator who cannot say what he means. Read Never Let Me Go (2005) next: the same technique, applied to a completely different premise.
What is Kazuo Ishiguro’s most famous book?
The Remains of the Day, which won the Booker Prize in 1989 and was filmed in 1993 with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. Never Let Me Go (2005), shortlisted for the Booker and filmed in 2010, is the other book most readers know him by.
In what order should I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s books?
Any order: there is no series, no recurring character and no shared world. A useful first sequence is The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go, An Artist of the Floating World and Klara and the Sun, with The Unconsoled saved until you know his method.
What is Kazuo Ishiguro’s new book?
Miss Lambert Steps Aboard Danger, announced in June 2026 for publication by Faber in the UK and Knopf in the US on 9 March 2027. It is set in 1938: Richard Hadley meets the mysterious Miss Lambert after a music hall matinee and follows her to a country hotel and onto a train bound for Scotland. It will be his first novel since Klara and the Sun (2021). His most recent book is The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain (2024), his lyrics for Stacey Kent.
Which Kazuo Ishiguro books have been made into films?
The Remains of the Day (1993, with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson), Never Let Me Go (2010, with Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley), and A Pale View of Hills (2025, directed by Kei Ishikawa, which premiered at Cannes). Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun, with Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams, is due in cinemas in October 2026. Ishiguro also wrote the screenplay for Living (2022), which earned him an Oscar nomination.
Is Never Let Me Go science fiction?
It has a science-fiction premise, children raised to become organ donors, but almost none of the machinery: no technology on the page, no explanation of how the system works and no rebellion against it. It is usually shelved and taught as literary fiction.
What genre does Kazuo Ishiguro write?
Literary fiction, nearly always narrated in the first person by someone who holds something back. Individual books borrow other genres: the detective story in When We Were Orphans, science fiction in Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun, fantasy in The Buried Giant, and a 1938 spy caper in the forthcoming Miss Lambert Steps Aboard Danger.
What was the argument about The Buried Giant and fantasy?
In 2015 Ishiguro told The New York Times he worried readers would not follow him into a book with ogres and a dragon. Ursula K. Le Guin wrote that she respected what he was trying to do but that “it couldn’t work”, and suggested he looked down on fantasy. Ishiguro replied that she had “got the wrong person” and that he was “on the side of the pixies and the dragons”; Le Guin later apologised for an “over-hasty response”.
Who is Kazuo Ishiguro?
A British novelist, born in Nagasaki, Japan, on 8 November 1954, who has lived in England since 1960, when his father’s work as an oceanographer brought the family to Guildford, Surrey. He studied at the University of Kent and took the creative writing MA at the University of East Anglia. He won the Booker Prize in 1989 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017, and was knighted in 2018.
Is Kazuo Ishiguro still alive?
Yes. He was born on 8 November 1954 and lives in north London. His next novel is due in March 2027.
Why did Kazuo Ishiguro win the Nobel Prize?
The Swedish Academy gave him the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature as a writer “who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world”.
Does Kazuo Ishiguro write in English or Japanese?
English only. He moved to England at five and has written all his fiction in English. The two novels set in Japan, A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World, came from an imagined Japan: he did not go back to the country until 1989, nearly thirty years after he left.
How do you pronounce Kazuo Ishiguro?
Roughly ka-ZOO-oh ish-ih-GOO-roh. Wikipedia gives it as /kæˈzuː.oʊ ˌɪʃɪˈɡuroʊ/.
Where does Kazuo Ishiguro live?
In Golders Green, north London, with his wife Lorna MacDougall, whom he met in 1979 when both were working for the homelessness charity West London Cyrenians in Notting Hill. They married in 1986. Their daughter, Naomi Ishiguro, is also a published novelist.
Has Kazuo Ishiguro written short stories?
Yes. Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall (2009) is his only collection. Before that he published seven stories in anthologies and magazines between 1981 and 2001, including “A Family Supper” (1983) and “A Village After Dark” (The New Yorker, 2001); none of the seven has been collected in a book of his own. They are listed under Everything Else.
Footnotes
- Kazuo Ishiguro — Wikipedia
- Kazuo Ishiguro — Facts, NobelPrize.org
- Kazuo Ishiguro — Biographical, NobelPrize.org
- How Kazuo Ishiguro wrote The Remains of the Day — The Booker Prizes
- Faber acquires Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel — The Bookseller, 2026
- The Buried Giant — Wikipedia
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Indeed — why should I not admit it? — at that moment, my heart was breaking.”
— Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day (1989)
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