Staff Pick
A sometimes quiet, sometimes tense quest novel, The Buried Giant weaves the pastoral with the magical. An elderly couple start a journey to visit the son they haven't seen in years. Anticipating an easy trip, they soon become entangled with a warrior, a knight, and a sleeping dragon, not to mention pixies and slightly sinister boatmen. Not just a fantasy story, Ishiguro's novel has much to say about marriage, trust, memory, and love. With a nod to Charlie Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Ishiguro asks whether or not, if possible, we would choose to keep our painful memories. Do they make us who we are? Do they change us into other people? Before they know it, the elderly couple realizes the choice they make about memory will affect their entire world. Sweet, and bittersweet as well, The Buried Giant is an unexpected story from a literary giant. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
KAZUO ISHIGURO's seven previous books have won him wide renown and numerous honors. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. Both The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go have more than 1,000,000 copies in print across platforms, and both were adapted into highly acclaimed films.
Synopsis
From the author of Never Let Me Goand the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day The Romans have long since departed and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. But, at least, the wars that once ravaged the country have ceased. Axl and Beatrice, a couple of elderly Britons, decide that now is the time, finally, for them to set off across this troubled land of mist and rain to find the son they have not seen for years, the son they can scarcely remember. They know they will face many hazards some strange and otherworldly but they cannot foresee how their journey will reveal to them the dark and forgotten corners of their love for each other. Nor can they foresee that they will be joined on their journey by a Saxon warrior, his orphan charge, and a knight each of them, like Axl and Beatrice, lost in some way to his own past, but drawn inexorably toward the comfort, and the burden, of the fullness of a life s memories.
Sometimes savage, sometimes mysterious, always intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro s first novel in a decade tells a luminous story about the act of forgetting and the power of memory, a resonant tale of love, vengeance, and war.
From the Hardcover edition."
About the Author
An extraordinary new novel from the author of
Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize-winning
The Remains of the Day.
"You've long set your heart against it, Axl, I know. But it's time now to think on it anew. There's a journey we must go on, and no more delay . . ."
The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.
Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in nearly a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge, and war.