TheBuried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of five. His nine works of fiction have earned him many honours around the world, including the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Booker Prize. His work has been translated into over fifty languages and The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, both made into acclaimed films, have each sold over a million copies in Faber editions. He received a knighthood in 2018 for Services to Literature. He also holds the decorations of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star from Japan.There's a journey we must go on, and no more delay . . .The Buried Giant does what important books do: It remains in the mind long after it has been read, refusing to leave, forcing one to turn it over and over ... Ishiguro is not afraid to tackle huge, personal themes, nor to use myths, history and the fantastic as the tools to do it. The Buried Giant is an exceptional novel.What Ishiguro has delivered, after much labour, is a beautiful fable with a hard message at its core ... there won't, I suspect, be a more important work of fiction published this year than The Buried Giant. And take note, Peter Jackson. Ishiguro's fiction makes wonderful films.Ishiguro is, as ever, very readable ... the novel is moving and strangely resonant. I suspect him of being wise, of having a vision that subtly and politely exceeds that of ordinary people ... Ultimately the novel achieves a tragic synthesis between its various parts that ... reverberates powerfully in the mind.The Buried Giant ... reveals itself as a work not just of great originality but peculiar, even hypnotic, beauty: such a late, great extension to Arthurian literature.*Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel Klara and the Sun is now available*

The Romans have long since departed, and Britain is steadily declining into ruin.

The Buried Giant begins as a couple, Axl and Beatrice, set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen for years. They expect to face many hazards - some strange and other-worldly - but they cannot yet foresee how their journey will reveal to them dark and forgotten corners of their love for one another.

'A beautiful fable with a hard message at its core . . . There won't, I suspect, be a more important work of fiction published this year.' John Sutherland, The Times

'An exceptional novel . . . The Buried Giant does what important books do: it remains in the mind long after it has been read, refusing to leave.' Neil Gaiman, New York Times Book Review

'A beautiful, heartbreaking book about the duty to remember and the urge to forget.' Alex Preston, Observer