The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro
13 Rating(s)
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The Buried Giant
A novel

Bestseller

Author: Kazuo Ishiguro

Narrator: David Horovitch

Unabridged: 11 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/03/2015

Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes a luminous meditation on the act of forgetting and the power of memory.
 
In post-Arthurian Britain, the wars that once raged between the Saxons and the Britons have finally ceased. Axl and Beatrice, an elderly British couple, set off to visit their son, whom they haven't seen in years. And, because a strange mist has caused mass amnesia throughout the land, they can scarcely remember anything about him. As they are joined on their journey by a Saxon warrior, his orphan charge, and an illustrious knight, Axl and Beatrice slowly begin to remember the dark and troubled past they all share.

By turns savage, suspenseful, and intensely moving, The Buried Giant is a luminous meditation on the act of forgetting and the power of memory.

About The Author

KAZUO ISHIGURO was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of 5. He is the author of 6 novels: A Pale View of Hills (1982, Winifred Holtby Memorial 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 Booker Prize). Nocturnes (2009), his connected stories collection, was awarded the Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa International Literary Prize. 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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Emily May on April 16, 2015

I have only read one other Ishiguro novel and that is Never Let Me Go. Nevertheless, I too was intrigued about what would happen when a highly-acclaimed author of literary fiction transitioned into fantasy. Unfortunately, having read the book, I'm still not even sure. What happened here? It's one of......more

Goodreads review by Andrew on May 05, 2015

Is it better to remember? Or can we only live with ourselves and one another through ignorance? Kazuo Ishiguro writes a spellbinding fable of one elderly couple's quest for memory. Their journey takes us deep into a nostalgically rendered Dark Age. A post-Arthurian Britain inhabited by the myths and......more

Goodreads review by Issicratea on November 18, 2017

The Buried Giant is a subtle and melancholy reflection on memory and forgetfulness and the roles they play both in the lives of individuals and those of countries and peoples. It is the kind of novel that yields up its secrets gradually, and it’s worth persisting with even if you are not initially c......more

Goodreads review by Andrea on August 05, 2015

Oh boy, this is the book that caused such uproar among Ishiguro fans! Before you pick up this novel, please believe me when I say this is going to be nothing like any of his previous work. So if you are resistant to change, you might want to skip this one. Don’t expect it to be The Remains of the Da......more

Goodreads review by William2 on September 05, 2024

I am an Ishiguro enthusiast if ever there was one. I have read his oeuvre. That's why it pains me a little to say that I found The Buried Giant disappointing. I say this not because I think Ishiguro's skills as a novelist are one whit duller than usual. But because I did not care for the story or it......more

Quotes

“Spectacular. . . . The Buried Giant has the clear ring of legend, as graceful, original and humane as anything Ishiguro has written.”—The Washington Post

“An exceptional novel. . . . The Buried Giant does what important books do: It remains in the mind long after it has been read, refusing to leave.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Lush and thrilling, rolling the gothic, fantastical, political, and philosophical into one.”—The New Republic

“Mesmerizing. . . . A provocative, multilayered mosaic. . . . Lifetimes of myth, allegory, and epic discoveries are contained within.”—The Christian Science Monitor

“A literary tour de force so unassuming that you don't realize until the last page that you're reading a masterpiece.”—USA Today

“Splendid. . . . Excellent. . . . The Buried Giant is a simple and powerful tale of love, aging and loss.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Ishiguro is a master of the uncanny. . . . Few write about the mysteries of the human experience with such grace as Ishiguro, and his prodigious gifts are evident throughout the novel.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Devastating . . . As emotionally ruinous an ending as any I’ve read in a very long time, and it made me circle back to the opening pages, to re-enter the strange mist of this sad and remarkable book.”—Mark O’Connell, Slate

“A profound meditation on trauma, memory, and the collective lies nations and groups create to expiate their guilt.”—The Boston Globe

“If forced at knife-point to choose my favorite Ishiguro novel, I’d opt for The Buried Giant. It uses the tropes of fantasy to set up a smoke-screen which the book then, by twists and turns, dispels. This reveal gives the book a shadow-plot, and layers of mystery . . . An ideas-enabler, a metaphor-animator.”—David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks

“Ishiguro is a deft gut-renovator of genres, bringing fresh life and feeling to hollowed-out conventions. . . . The love story at its center shimmers with a mythic and melancholy grace.”—Vulture

“A beautiful, heartbreaking book about the duty to remember and the urge to forget.”—The Guardian

“Powerful and disturbing. . . . Provokes strong emotions—and lingers long in the mind.”—The Economist

“A beautiful fable with a hard message at its core. . . . There won’t, I suspect, be a more important work of fiction published this year than The Buried Giant.”—John Sutherland, The Times (London)

“A novel of imaginative daring that, in its subtleties of tone, mood and reflection, could be the work of no other writer. . . . In the manner of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Ishiguro has created a fantastical alternate reality in which, in spite of the extremity of its setting and because of its integrity and emotional truth, you believe unhesitatingly.”—Financial Times

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