Why serious literary fiction like Ishiguro’s is vital in times like these | Alice O’Keeffe
In our digital age, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nobel prize is a reminder that it is still novels that ask the biggest questions
It’s always entertaining to observe the interaction between the news media and a writer who has just won the Nobel prize. The all-time best was obviously Doris Lessing, who when doorstepped simply rolled her eyes and snorted “Oh Christ”, before turning around to pay for her taxi. Bob Dylan studiously ignored the whole thing, while Kazuo Ishiguro had clearly emerged from solitary confinement in his study on Thursday (he is in the middle of writing a novel), to face a barrage of questions and photographs. Blinking and bewildered, he described the themes he has spent his life thinking about and painstakingly unpicking: “The way countries and nations and communities remember their past, and how often they bury the uncomfortable memories from their past.”
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Parents push their young children towards books, while they themselves spend every moment of leisure time plugged in
