By Ratan Bhattacharjee
The Nobel Prize in literature 2017 of 9 million crown (1.1million dollar ) was awarded to Japanese novelist Kazuo Ishiguro who in his writings “has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world”.
His best novel was The Remains of the Day where the narrator Stevens, a butler, recalls his life in the form of a diary .The theme of the decline of British aristocracy can be linked to the break-up of many estates which gave the novel a realistic edge.
The narrator invites readers to look beneath the facts of the incidents as the public face is presented by a character whose very essence is characterised by the dignified facade. The novel does not present Steven’s situation as simply a personal one as he is shown being loyal to Darlington whose friendly approach towards Germany through his friendship to Charles Barnet also results in close contacts to right-wing extremist organisations.
Lord Darlington’s upbringing and heritage carries a certain type of dignity that is above and beyond Steven’s own and herein is the crux of the novel.
The six-day excursion becomes a tour into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in facism with two world wars and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper. Nostalgia and memory dominate the novels of Ishiguro.
In England Ishiguro did his Ph.D. on Japanese migrants in Britain, and obviously memory becomes important in his mental set up. The Remains Of The Day won the Man Booker Prize in 1989. His fifth novel written in 2000 When We Were Orphans was also a story of cooperation with imperialism and here too things un-said were more important than the said ones- indeed his ‘twilight colours’.
In 2005 he wrote a dystopian science fiction Never Let Me Go which brought him Booker Prize for the second time and Time Magazine named it as the best novel of the year .The protagonist Kathy describes herself as carer.The story revolves round Kathy and two others- Ruth and Tommy- who develop a close but complicated relationship. The novel’s title came from a song on a cassette tape called Songs After Dark by fictional singer Judy Bridgewater. The novel subtly re-imagines our world and time in a haunting story of friendship and love and takes its place among Kazuo Ishiguro’s finest work.
The Swedish Academy hailed Ishiguro’s ability to reveal “the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world .. in novels of great emotional force” that touch on memory , time and self delusion as in all Immigrants literature. Ishiguro waded into politics calling a rise in hostility towards immigrants after the British voted to leave the European Union.
The twilight colours of his writings come from his typical mental make up as an immigrant :” What I’m interested is not the actual fact that my characters have done things they later regret. I’m interested in how they come to terms with it.” as Ishiguro told long ago to The New York Times.
Ishiguro takes his place beside Alexander Solzhenitsyn , Doris Lessing and Ernest Hemingway as winner of this most prestigious literary award. But what is special about this year’s Nobel Prize winner this year is that the laureate in literature is an immigrant.
Last year all Nobel Laureates were immigrants. This is also a victory for immigration literature. Nobel Committee thwarted the expectations of the Japanese aspirants for Nobel Prize and like last year this year too, a debate is expected. but one thing is clear that the Prize goes to a great writer who was recognised again and again. In going to praise Ishiguro the former poet laureate Andrew Motion rightly assessed in The Guardian Ishiguro’s imaginative world has the great virtue and value of being simultaneously highly individual and deeply familiar- a world of puzzlement , isolation , watchfulness, threat and wonder.”
(With inputs from Willie
Gordon Suting)
(The author is Associate Professor and Head of Post Graduate, Department of English, Dum Dum Motijheel College)
