Come and chat to KAZUO ISHIGURO about his extraordinary writing career on Thurs 9 April, 9-10pm

[TillyBookClub]

Kazuo Ishiguro OBE is a multiple nominee and winner of the Booker Prize and dozens of other international awards. Throughout his hugely successful and varied career, from the exquisitely poignant REMAINS OF THE DAY to the dystopian NEVER LET ME GO, he has often explored the idea of memory: how it shapes us, its fickle nature, how it distorts the choices we make.

Ishiguro’s new novel, THE BURIED GIANT, is an adventure fantasy, set in a Dark Ages Britain populated with knights, giants, monks and dragons. All the inhabitants appear to have suffered a loss of memory. The central characters, Axl and Beatrice, are an elderly married couple on a journey to find their son. As with all fantastical quests, they encounter mysterious strangers and dangerous escapades. Throughout the novel, an overriding question hangs in the air: is it worth suffering painful memories, or better to live in ignorance?

For more details, go to our book of the month page. You might also like Mark Lawson's interview with the author on BBC iplayer.

Faber have very generously offered 50 hardbacks of The Buried Giant to give to Mumsnetters. To claim yours, please fill in your details on the book of the month page. We’ll post on this thread when the copies have gone. If you’re not lucky enough to bag one of those, you can always get a copy here.

We have the very rare and special opportunity to talk to Kazuo Ishiguro when he joins us on Thursday April 9th, 9-10pm for a live web chat. The discussion will range from his latest book to his previous bestsellers and future projects. So whether you have read THE BURIED GIANT, or are a lifelong fan of REMAINS OF THE DAY, or would like a few tips from one of the UK’s most experienced and acclaimed writers, please come along and say hello. Look forward to seeing you on Thurs 9th…

In my mind I link Never Let Me Go with A Handmaiden's Tale for dystopian fascination.

Thank you, Mumsnet, for the opportunity to join this discussion tonight, and sincere thanks, Kazuo, for your gracious replies to our questions. Wish you the very best of luck with your future 'productions'.

Barricade.

Yes deeply appreciated, wonderful answers thank you, cant wait to read more of your work

@whatwoulddexterdo

Hi Kazuo, Thank you so much for coming on to Mumsnet, I am posting my thoughts/ questions early as I am desperate to have them answered as I have been a long time admirer of your work. I have literally just finished The Buried Giant, a beautiful book, beautifully written. Even the cover is amazing and so lovely to look at on my bookshelf.

However, I wanted to ask you about Never Let Me go which is my desert Island book. I found this almost unbearably sad and I have read it several times now. To me it is a perfect book club choice as there is so much left unsaid, and open to personal interpretation, and also raises so many questions on ethics.

What was your motivation to write this book? What message did you want your reader to take from it? Is it just an unbearably sad love story or did you want the reader to view it as a "warning" as to what could happen if genetic testing/cloning was taken too far?

Also Miss Emily believed that hiding the truth from the "children" was the best thing to do whilst Miss Lucy thought they should know what their purpose was from the outset. I wonder is this the same as a normal parent trying to shield their child from the inevitable reality of their eventual death?

For what its worth I hated the film adaptation. In my opinion it "dumbed down" the central themes of the book, and to be quite frank was boring. How much control did you have over the production? And was it easy to relinquish your "control" over Kathy?

Apologies for all the Questions, and totally understand if you dont answer them all.
Good luck with your future books and please can we have a happy ever after ending next time!!!

Running out of time, so can't answer all your very interesting questions. But I think the question about how much we should 'deceive' children as they grow up about the harshness of the world that awaits them is a difficult and haunting one, and one every parent wrestles with. Yes, it was my intention to create a kind of concrete metaphor of the way we're all obliged to muddle through with this dilemma when raising children. At Hailsham, the children are given bad info about the world just before they can fully understand it, so they grow up 'knowing and not knowing'. I thought this was close to what many of us as parents ended up doing.

Not to diss your previous interviewees, but this is the first webchat guest I've been really impressed by, Mumsnet. How about Nicole Krauss? Vikram Seth? More great writers, please. :)

Thanks for answering so many questions Kazuo - it is really fascinating to hear about the writing process and the inspiration behind your work. Best of luck with the next novel and all your other projects too.

@TillyMumsnetBookClub

I wish we had more time, but we have come to the end of our hour. Thank you to everyone for their questions and making this such an extremely lively discussion night, and apologies that there wasn't time to answer every question.

Kazuo, thank you so much for your thoughtful, engaged answers. As you can tell by the glowing messages, it means an enormous amount to us that you joined us tonight, and have given so much of your time and energy. It is deeply appreciated.

We never got round to what you are writing next, but please, if you can, come back again and talk to us about it when it is published. Good luck with the next book, and congratulations on all your success with The Buried Giant.

Many, many thanks once more.

Sorry, was busy typing away and didn't hear your end of game whistle. It's been a great pleasure to do this, and to be with you all tonight. Thanks so much, all over you, for joining in. And apologies to all those I couldn't get round to answering.

Yes, this was great. More great writers please.

Thanks so much, MNHQ, for arranging this. This has been one of the best Q&As I've seen on here (even if my questions were left unanswered!) So many interesting questions and such insightful answers, too.

Yes, I need to concede grudgingly that it was fantastic even though none of my questions were answered. Makes it extra gutting though since he was giving such thoughtful responses! Ah well...must just look at all the great stuff in the other replies.

I hope you are not offended. I disliked it as i read it, and it really irritated me and it sat with me and niggled me for a long time after I read it (about 10 years ago or whatever). I still can't like the characters and the story. But it is still compelling, and it still stays with me. Do I have a similar response to a lot of books and films? No. Simply because few are interesting enough or shift my approach to a fiction scenario so much.

@booksandwool

I've got a stack of questions but don't want to pile them all on straight away - must share nicely! So just one for now, about The Buried Giant (which I really enjoyed, by the way, for context) - I'd love to know which came first - the basic themes (memory, loss, love) and the key characters, or the idea of writing a dragon-knight-ogre sort of book? I'm sort of asking this because I loved Axl and Beatrice so much, and might have loved them even more without the ogres.

Hi booksandwool. Sorry I didn't make it to your questions. Since you seem particularly huffy - more than everyone else - about my not answering you, I'm coming back with a PS (though you have to experience what it's like to be on the end of a tide of questions like that to appreciate my difficulty in answering everyone!). To answer you: I started with the themes. I had a story in mind about a community where everyone old and young is suffering from some weird memory loss, or controlled amnesia; and the two main characters, a married couple, want their memories back for personal reasons, without fully realizing the implications of the amnesia dissolving for the community as a whole. I toyed with putting this down in a dystopian setting, where the amnesia had some hi-tech origin; I also thought about somewhere in recent history e.g. Bosnia, or France after WWII full of guilty memories of collaboration. The decision to set it in post-Arthurian Britain came pretty late. In fact, it came years after the concept first formed in my head. Goodnight and thanks for taking part.

That was a fantastic Q&A - many thanks to Kazuo for providing such thoughtful answers. And I'm beyond chuffed that he answered my questions!

I expect you've gone by now, but thank you! And I feel embarrassed about my huffiness now. And I appreciate you were quite bombarded with questions. But you've made my day.

Sadly couldn't be on this when KI was here but saw he answered my question and in response to me I would like to say that I had a fantastic English teacher and loved Remains of the Day after studying and have read everything else written by him since. Also my sister is an English teacher and loves teaching this book

Thank you MNHQ for having him on here. Absolutely loved reading his responses.

Just finished the book recently but couldn't find the thread to post message to. This style of book is not typical of what I read. However I really enjoyed reading the book and loved Axl and Beatrice's journey and story. The middle of the book was a little hard to read as Beatrice and Axl are in the background and the other characters stories unfold. I did get a little lost as I wasn't sure which way the book was going. It all comes together in the end. None the less it's a good read, beautifully written and very creative and descriptive. Thanks