When We Were Orphans is the a compelling thriller by Kazuo Ishiguro, Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go, and The Buried Giant. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Kazuo Ishiguro's seven published books have won him wide renown and many honours around the world. His work has been translated into over forty languages. The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go have each sold in excess of 1,000,000 copies in Faber editions alone, and both were adapted into highly acclaimed films. His latest novel is The Buried Giant.
Set in Shanghai on the eve of World War II, Ishiguro's Booker-nominated novel follows the surreal predicament of Christopher Banks, an English expatriate whose overwrought state is perfectly rendered by narrator John Lee. After his parents are mysteriously kidnapped, nine-year-old Christopher is shipped off to England, where he grows up to become the Sherlock Holmes of his timesÄa man able to right wrongs, restore order. After 18 years, Banks returns to Shanghai with the bizarre notion that if he can find his parents, he can prevent the world war. Banks's search drags him through the era's Chinese-Japanese war in a masterful sequence where past and present, reality and imagination, good and evil become indistinguishable. Lee seamlessly renders Banks's complex psychology, but he employs an exaggerated nasal voice for the characters of several pompous Brits, and his Chinese and Japanese accents are often off-putting. But listeners probably won't let these small blemishes keep them from Ishiguro's much-acclaimed tale of abandonment, nostalgia and self-delusion. Based on the Knopf hardcover (Forecasts, July 10). (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
Atmosphere, historical detail, suspense: Ishiguro's new book has it all, and if the parts finally don't add up, the author should still be credited with providing another great read. He should also be credited with originality, for though he investigates the polarities of insider-outsider, English-foreign, as he has done before (e.g., The Remains of the Day, The Unconsoled), he is hardly writing the same book again and again. Here, Christopher Banks is an Englishman born in early 20th-century Shanghai whose parents disappear mysteriously when he is nine. He is escorted to England, grows up to be a famed detective, and returns to Shanghai, convinced that his parents are still alive and that he must find them. The reader is less convinced that Banks is a real detective and wonder how he can entertain the romantic notion that his parents have been held hostage in Shanghai for decades, but the truth behind their disappearance comes as a satisfying surprise. And the writing is just wonderful, at once rich and taut. More writers should take style lessons from Ishiguro. For most collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/00.]DBarbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
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