England, 1930s. Christopher Banks has become the country’s most celebrated detective, his cases the talk of London society. Yet one unsolved crime has always haunted him: the mysterious disappearance of his parents, in old Shanghai, when he was a small boy. Moving between London and Shanghai of the inter-war years, When We Were Orphans is a remarkable story of memory, intrigue and the need to return.
When We Were Orphans
by Kazuo Ishiguro
A novel of memory and loss, set between London of the 1930s and Shanghai between the wars
Overview
About Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and came to Britain at the age of five. He is the author of six novels: A Pale View of Hills (1982, Winifred Holtby Prize), An Artist of the Floating World (1986, Whitbread Book of the Year Award, Premio Scanno, shortlisted for the Booker Prize), The Remains of the Day (1989, winner of the Booker Prize), The Unconsoled (1995, winner of the Cheltenham Prize), When We Were Orphans (2000, shortlisted for the Booker Prize) and Never Let Me Go (2005, Corine Internationaler Buchpreis, Serono Literary Prize, Casino de Santiago European Novel Award, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize). Nocturnes (2009) was awarded the Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa International Literary Prize. Kazuo Ishiguro's seventh novel, The Buried Giant, will be published by Faber in March 2015. Kazuo Ishiguro's work has been translated into over forty languages. The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go have also been adapted into major films. In 1995 Ishiguro received an OBE for Services to Literature, and in 1998 the French decoration of Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.
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