Kazuo Ishiguro, in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky, recorded October 6, 2000 while he was on tour for his novel “When We Were Orphans.”
The winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, Sir Kazuo Ishiguro is recognized today as one of the world’s leading authors. Nominated four times, he won the Booker Prize in 1989 for The Remains of the Day, and was most recently nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay for the 2022 film “Living.”
In this interview, he discusses his most recent book at that time, When We Were Orphans, and talks about how he became a writer and the relationship of his Japanese heritage to his life in Great Britain, where he’s lived since he was six years old. His most recent novel, a parable, is titled Klara and the Sun, and was published in 2021. This interview was digitized, remastered and edited in November 2023 and has never been heard in its entirety.
Along with Living, which can be seen on Netflix, Kazuo Ishiguro has written screenplays for The Saddest Music in the World, now on AMC plus. An Adaptation of Never Let Me Go can be found on Starz, and one of An Artist of the Floating World is on Amazon Prime. Both The White Countess, for which he wrote the screenplay, and his adaptation of the Remains of the Day can be rented on various apps. A television series adaptation of Never Let Me Go was announced and then cancelled.