In between he won the Booker prize for The Remains of the Day, which was given the full Merchant Ivory treatment in 1993. Precocity is part of the Ishiguro myth: at 27 he was the youngest on Granta’s inaugural best of young British novelists list in 1983 (with Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes et al), appearing again the following decade. In Nobel terms, at 62 Ishiguro was a relative whippersnapper. Ishiguro, pictured at the Booker prize in 1989, when he won for The Remains of the Day. “My mother had a huge amount to do with my becoming a writer,” he says now. His latest novel Klara and the Sun, in part about maternal devotion and his first since winning the Nobel, is dedicated to her. “She said: ‘I thought you’d win it sooner or later.’” She died, aged 92, two years ago. “I said: ‘I’ve won the Nobel, Shon.’ Oddly, she didn’t seem very surprised,” he recalls.

With the Nobel it is freak lightning out of the blue – wham!” Within half an hour there was a queue of journalists outside the front door. You hear the rumbling thunder coming towards you, often not striking. “It’s the opposite to the Booker prize, where there’s a longlist and then a shortlist. I might have to help him out.”īack home, Kazuo Ishiguro was having a late breakfast when his agent called. “My husband has just won the Nobel prize for literature. “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to stop this,” she said to the waiting hairdresser. She was sitting in a Hampstead salon, not far from Golders Green in London, where they have lived for many years, all gowned up, and glanced at her phone. After weeks of discussion, the author’s wife, Lorna, had finally decided to change her hair colour. F or the Ishiguro household, 5 October 2017 was a big day.

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