Kazuo Ishiguro wins Nobel Prize in Literature

Acclaimed Japanese-born British writer Kazuo Ishiguro was on Thursday named the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2017.

Ishiguro is one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors in the English-speaking world, having received four Man Booker Prize nominations, and winning the 1989 award for his novel The Remains of the Day.

The Swedish Academy hailed Ishiguro for his “ novels of great emotional force” in which he has “ uncovered the abyss beneath the illusory sense of connection with the world”.

Ishiguro was born in Japan in 1954 and his family moved to the United Kingdom when he was just five-years-old. Ishiguro obtained his bachelor's degree from the University of Kent in 1978 and his Master's from the University of East Anglia's creative writing course in 1980.

Memory, time and self delusion are some of the constant themes in his literary works. Kazuo Ishiguro has written eight books, as well as scripts for film and television.

With the dystopian work Never Let Me Go (2005), Ishiguro introduced a cold undercurrent of science fiction into his work. Ishiguro's latest novel, The Buried Giant (2015) explores how memory relates to oblivion, history to the present, and fantasy to reality.

He was chosen from diverse proposals made by literary stalwarts and former Nobel laureates from across the globe. An assembly of 18 Swedes, the Academy members are elected by secret ballot to their roles and hold them for life. For the eventual winner to be decided, it is mandatory for more than half of the academy's members to vote in his/her favour.

The Swedish Academy had received and approved 240 proposals for this year and 195 candidates were nominated.