Kazuo Ishiguro - Academy of Achievement

<!doctype html> <html lang="en-US" prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns#"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=HxkREWBo" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("https://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("http://www.achievement.org:80/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro","20190103172847","https://web.archive.org/","web","/_static/", "1546536527"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=S1zqJCYt" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="57x57" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="114x114" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-114x114.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="72x72" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-72x72.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="144x144" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-144x144.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="60x60" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-60x60.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="120x120" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-120x120.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="76x76" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-76x76.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="152x152" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-152x152.png"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-196x196.png" sizes="196x196"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-96x96.png" sizes="96x96"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-32x32.png" sizes="32x32"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-16x16.png" sizes="16x16"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-128.png" sizes="128x128"/> <meta name="application-name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#000000"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-144x144.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square70x70logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-70x70.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square150x150logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-150x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-wide310x150logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square310x310logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x310.png"/> <link href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847cs_/https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Sans+Pro:400,600,400italic,600italic,700,700italic" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <title>Kazuo Ishiguro - Academy of Achievement</title>  <meta name="description" content=" Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Japan but moved to England with his parents when he was only five years old. His first two novels, both set in Japan, drew unanimous critical praise, but it was his third novel, set in England, that brought him international acclaim. The Remains of the Day portrays the most English of settings and characters, the master and servants of a great country house in the years before World War II. The book’s evocation of a lost way of life, and its brilliantly expressed themes of memory, loss, and the power of heartfelt truths left unspoken, earned its author England’s highest literary honor, the Booker Prize. It sold over a million copies and was made into an acclaimed feature film. Ishiguro’s subsequent works have ranged from the boldly experimental novel The Unconsoled to the dystopian fantasy Never Let Me Go — also made into a feature film. In his 2015 book, The Buried Giant, he explores the mythological Britain of the Dark Ages. With unerring skill and unbridled imagination, Ishiguro continues to surprise and delight his readers as the most daring and inventive novelist of his generation. "/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="Kazuo Ishiguro - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="<div class="page" title="Page 42"> <div class="layoutArea"> <div class="column"> Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Japan but moved to England with his parents when he was only five years old. His first two novels, both set in Japan, drew unanimous critical praise, but it was his third novel, set in England, that brought him international acclaim. <em>The Remains of the Day</em> portrays the most English of settings and characters, the master and servants of a great country house in the years before World War II. The book’s evocation of a lost way of life, and its brilliantly expressed themes of memory, loss, and the power of heartfelt truths left unspoken, earned its author England’s highest literary honor, the Booker Prize. It sold over a million copies and was made into an acclaimed feature film. Ishiguro’s subsequent works have ranged from the boldly experimental novel <em>The Unconsoled</em> to the dystopian fantasy <em>Never Let Me Go</em> — also made into a feature film. In his 2015 book, <em>The Buried Giant</em>, he explores the mythological Britain of the Dark Ages. With unerring skill and unbridled imagination, Ishiguro continues to surprise and delight his readers as the most daring and inventive novelist of his generation. </div> </div> </div>"/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/ishiguro-Feature-Image.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="2800"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="1120"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:description" content="<div class="page" title="Page 42"> <div class="layoutArea"> <div class="column"> Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Japan but moved to England with his parents when he was only five years old. His first two novels, both set in Japan, drew unanimous critical praise, but it was his third novel, set in England, that brought him international acclaim. <em>The Remains of the Day</em> portrays the most English of settings and characters, the master and servants of a great country house in the years before World War II. The book’s evocation of a lost way of life, and its brilliantly expressed themes of memory, loss, and the power of heartfelt truths left unspoken, earned its author England’s highest literary honor, the Booker Prize. It sold over a million copies and was made into an acclaimed feature film. Ishiguro’s subsequent works have ranged from the boldly experimental novel <em>The Unconsoled</em> to the dystopian fantasy <em>Never Let Me Go</em> — also made into a feature film. In his 2015 book, <em>The Buried Giant</em>, he explores the mythological Britain of the Dark Ages. With unerring skill and unbridled imagination, Ishiguro continues to surprise and delight his readers as the most daring and inventive novelist of his generation. </div> </div> </div>"/> <meta name="twitter:title" content="Kazuo Ishiguro - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="twitter:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/ishiguro-Feature-Image.jpg"/> <script type="application/ld+json">{"@context":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190103172847\/http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"WebSite","@id":"#website","url":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190103172847\/http:\/\/www.achievement.org\/","name":"Academy of Achievement","alternateName":"A museum of living history","potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20190103172847\/http:\/\/www.achievement.org\/search\/{search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}</script> <script 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class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">Kazuo Ishiguro</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">Nobel Prize in Literature</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-43795 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-author careers-novelist"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane fade in active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="banner clearfix"> <div class="banner--single clearfix"> <div class="col-lg-8 col-lg-offset-2"> <div class="banner__image__container"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <img class="lazyload banner__image" data-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/WhatItTakes_ishiguro2-256-190x190.jpg" alt=""/> </figure> </a> </div> <div class="banner__text__container"> <h3 class="serif-3 banner__headline"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> Listen to this achiever on <i>What It Takes</i> </a> </h3> <p class="sans-6 banner__text m-b-0"><i>What It Takes</i> is an audio podcast on iTunes produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: music, science and exploration, sports, film, technology, literature, the military and social justice.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">When is the best time to start doing the actual writing, the writing of the words that go into the book? You’re just improvising. But you can get some kind of strange force out of that serendipity and improvisation, and you can bypass your own senses in a way and surprise and even shock yourself.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">Novels of Discovery and Revelation</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> November 8, 1954 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p>Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan. His mother had survived the atomic bomb attack on the city that ended World War II; his father had spent the war years in Shanghai. When Kazuo was five years old, his father, an oceanographer, accepted an invitation from the British government to conduct research in England, what he thought at the time was a temporary assignment in England. The family moved to Guildford, in the south of England. The temporary assignment became a permanent position, and though the Ishiguros continued to speak Japanese at home, young Kazuo grew up in an English town, attending English schools and singing in the church choir. When he was 15, his family decided to remain in Britain permanently. He did not see the country of his birth again until his mid-30s.</p> <figure id="attachment_43891" style="width: 2130px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43891 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-857836026.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43891 lazyload" alt="" width="2130" height="2894" data-sizes="(max-width: 2130px) 100vw, 2130px" data-srcset="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-857836026.jpg 2130w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-857836026-280x380.jpg 280w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-857836026-559x760.jpg 559w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-857836026.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Japanese-born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro playing the electric piano at his home in London. Ishiguro was born in the city of Nagasaki, southwestern Japan, and moved to Britain when he was 5. (Kyodo News via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p>As a boy, Kazuo Ishiguro enjoyed television Westerns and spy stories and wrote easily without entertaining any serious ambition of becoming a writer. The great creative awakening of his adolescence came at age 13 when he discovered the songs of Bob Dylan. He spent the next years learning to play guitar, writing songs, and studying the work of Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and other singer-songwriters of the era. After graduating from Woking Grammar School in Surrey, he took a year off to travel in the United States and Canada, and to make the round of record companies with demos of his songs.</p> <p>Although he still planned a career in music, Ishiguro studied literature and philosophy at the University of Kent in Canterbury. He began to read more seriously in college, taking a special interest in the novels of Charlotte Brontë and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Of contemporary novelists, he remembers enjoying the work of Margaret Drabble.</p> <figure id="attachment_43893" style="width: 1485px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43893 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/a-pale-view-of-hills.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43893 lazyload" alt="" width="1485" height="2339" data-sizes="(max-width: 1485px) 100vw, 1485px" data-srcset="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/a-pale-view-of-hills.jpg 1485w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/a-pale-view-of-hills-241x380.jpg 241w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/a-pale-view-of-hills-483x760.jpg 483w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/a-pale-view-of-hills.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1982: In his highly acclaimed debut novel, <em>A Pale View of Hills, </em>27-year-old<em> </em>Kazuo Ishiguro tells the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. Etsuko then relives scenes of Japan’s devastation in the wake of World War II. The novel won the 1982 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize.</figcaption></figure><p>On graduating, he moved to London, still hoping to pursue his songwriting career. He supported himself by working at a homeless shelter in Notting Hill, operated by the Cyrenians charitable organization.  He played his music in bars and coffee houses and made the rounds of agents and record labels with demo tapes, but a recording contract eluded him. Meanwhile, at the homeless shelter, he was getting a second education — in the hardships of life and the mysteries of human character.  While working at the shelter, he also met a young social worker named Lorna McDougall. They fell in love and in time would plan a life together.</p> <p>Thwarted in his music career, and uncertain of his future direction, he wrote a short radio play called <em>Potatoes and Lovers</em> and submitted it to the BBC. The script was not accepted, but the readers at the BBC saw potential in his work and encouraged him to pursue writing further.</p> <p>An advertisement drew his attention to the master’s program in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. Graduate writing programs were a novelty in Britain at the time — a previous year’s course had been canceled for lack of applicants — but Ishiguro was intrigued that one of his favorite contemporary authors, Ian McEwan, had studied there. Ishiguro submitted his radio play as a writing sample, and to his surprise, was accepted into the program.</p> <figure id="attachment_43899" style="width: 1491px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-43899 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/an-artist-of-the-floating-world.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-43899 size-full lazyload" alt="" width="1491" height="2339" data-sizes="(max-width: 1491px) 100vw, 1491px" data-srcset="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/an-artist-of-the-floating-world.jpg 1491w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/an-artist-of-the-floating-world-242x380.jpg 242w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/an-artist-of-the-floating-world-484x760.jpg 484w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/an-artist-of-the-floating-world.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1986: <em>An Artist of the Floating World </em>by Kazuo Ishiguro. Set in post-World War II Japan, narrator Masuji Ono, a respected artist in the 1930s and during the war, but now retired, is garrulously recalling the past. He notices how his once great reputation has faltered since the war and how the attitudes towards him and his paintings have changed. The novel was shortlisted for the 1986 Booker Prize and won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award.</figcaption></figure><p>He now became nervous that he was unprepared for the course, so he spent the summer of 1979 in a rented cottage in a remote area of Cornwall, reading, writing, and studying the short story form. With two stories completed, he felt more confident in entering the program. His tutors, Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter, were encouraging, but his efforts to write about the life he knew in Guildford and London fell flat. Recalling his mother’s stories of her youth in Nagasaki, he set a story there, describing the atomic bombing of Nagasaki from the point of view of a young woman. The necessity of describing a city and era he had not experienced stimulated his imagination. His fellow students were excited by the results. With a new energy in his writing, he reworked one of his earlier story ideas, setting it partly in Japan, and as the story grew beyond the limits of a short story, he made it his master’s thesis.</p> <figure id="attachment_43915" style="width: 1488px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-43915 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/remains-of-the-day-2.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-43915 size-full lazyload" alt="" width="1488" height="2338" data-sizes="(max-width: 1488px) 100vw, 1488px" data-srcset="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/remains-of-the-day-2.jpg 1488w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/remains-of-the-day-2-242x380.jpg 242w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/remains-of-the-day-2-484x760.jpg 484w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/remains-of-the-day-2.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1989: <em>The Remains of the Day,</em> Kazuo Ishiguro’s third novel — which he wrote in four weeks — is a portrait of a perfect English butler and his fading, insular world in post-war England. At the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, Stevens embarks on a country drive, during which he looks back over his career to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving “a great gentleman.” But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington’s “greatness” and graver doubts about his own faith in the man he has served. Kazuo Ishiguro was awarded the Man Booker Prize for <em>The Remains of the Day</em> in 1989, and the novel was adapted into an eight-time Oscar-nominated motion picture in 1993 starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.</figcaption></figure><p>Before he graduated from the program, three of his stories were accepted for <em>Introductions 7</em>, an anthology of young British authors published by the historic publishing firm of Faber and Faber. Robert McCrum — an editor at Faber only a few years older than Ishiguro — took an interest in his work. McCrum offered Ishiguro a £1,000 advance to expand his master’s thesis story into a full-length novel. Ishiguro completed his course at East Anglia and returned to London and his old job at the homeless shelter while completing his first book.</p> <figure id="attachment_43914" style="width: 1920px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43914 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-830101308-1.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43914 lazyload" alt="" width="1920" height="2770" data-sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" data-srcset="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-830101308-1.jpg 1920w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-830101308-1-263x380.jpg 263w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-830101308-1-527x760.jpg 527w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-830101308-1.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">October 10, 1989: Kazuo Ishiguro, with his book <em>The Remains of the Day,</em> at an awards ceremony held at medieval Guildhall in London, where he was awarded the Man Booker Prize. (Photo Credit: PA Images via Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p>Ishiguro’s first novel, <em>A Pale View of Hills</em>, was published in 1982 when he was 27. In its pages, a Japanese woman living in England recalls her earlier life in Japan, while trying to come to terms with a daughter’s suicide. The memories of Japan are interwoven with observations of life in England “through Japanese eyes.” Ishiguro’s first novel won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize from the Royal Society of Literature, awarded specifically for its depiction of an English setting. The following year, he was chosen alongside Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, William Boyd, Salman Rushdie and his East Anglia predecessor Ian McEwan for the literary journal <em>Granta</em>’s list of the best young British novelists. Having become a recognized British author, he knew his future lay in Britain, and he became a British citizen as well.</p> <p>Ishiguro and McDougall married in 1986, the year he published his second novel, <em>An Artist of the Floating World</em>. Set in Japan in the years following World War II, its narrator is a painter and printmaker struggling to live with the consequences of his support for the pre-war militarist government. The novel is driven in part by the tension between the reader’s judgment of the narrator’s actions and his effort to justify himself. This second novel won the Whitbread Book Award (now known as the Costa Book Award) and was shortlisted for the even more prestigious Booker Prize.</p> <figure id="attachment_43911" style="width: 1488px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43911 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/when-we-were-orphans.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43911 lazyload" alt="" width="1488" height="2339" data-sizes="(max-width: 1488px) 100vw, 1488px" data-srcset="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/when-we-were-orphans.jpg 1488w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/when-we-were-orphans-242x380.jpg 242w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/when-we-were-orphans-483x760.jpg 483w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/when-we-were-orphans.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2000: <em>When We Were Orphans</em> by Kazuo Ishiguro tells the story of Christopher Banks, an English boy born in early 20th-century Shanghai, who is orphaned at age nine when his mother and father both vanish under suspicious circumstances. Sent to live in England, he grows up to become a renowned detective and, more than twenty years later, returns to Shanghai, where the Sino-Japanese War is raging, to solve the mystery of the disappearances.</figcaption></figure><p>Having won praise for his two novels set in Japan, Ishiguro decided to write a novel set firmly in the country where he had spent almost all of his life. In reading the history of 20th-century England, he became fascinated by the life of the pre-war aristocracy and their servants, and particularly by the set of extremely conservative nobles, some of them sympathetic to Nazi Germany, who opposed Britain’s entry into World War II. He read numerous memoirs of the period, steeping himself in the milieu of the great English country house. An idea for a novel had taken hold of him. When the time came to start the actual writing, he made an unusual decision. Lorna agreed to take over his share of the housework, while he would cancel all other commitments and do nothing but write, take his meals, and sleep, for a period of four weeks while he worked up a first draft of the book that became <em>The Remains of the Day</em>.</p> <figure id="attachment_43909" style="width: 1485px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43909 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/never-let-me-go.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43909 lazyload" alt="" width="1485" height="2339" data-sizes="(max-width: 1485px) 100vw, 1485px" data-srcset="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/never-let-me-go.jpg 1485w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/never-let-me-go-241x380.jpg 241w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/never-let-me-go-483x760.jpg 483w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/never-let-me-go.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2005: <em>Never Let Me Go</em> by Kazuo Ishiguro is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In 2010, the film adaptation of the novel was released, co-starring actors Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, and Andrew Garfield.</figcaption></figure><p>The story was told in the voice of Mr. Stevens, a retired butler who spent his adult life in the service of Lord Darlington. Stevens takes pride in his service; he admires his employer and has difficulty recognizing the implications of his master’s ill-judged political involvement. Out of a misguided sense of duty and a temperamental inability to express his emotions — including his love for a former colleague, the housekeeper Miss Kenton — Stevens has sacrificed his last chance for love, family, and independence.</p> <p>Ishiguro’s crash program of writing accomplished its purpose. He had completed the essential elements of his book in four weeks and spent the next months revising and refining it. Shortly before publication, he made one last addition. He was so moved by an unexpected declaration of emotion in a song by Tom Waits that he decided Stevens too could be allowed one moment of self-awareness — a realization of all he has lost.</p> <figure id="attachment_43907" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43907 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-104051870.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43907 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1548" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-104051870.jpg 2280w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-104051870-380x258.jpg 380w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-104051870-760x516.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-104051870.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">September 13, 2010: Producer Andrew Macdonald, actress Carey Mulligan, writer Alex Garland, director Mark Romanek, producer Allon Reich and author Kazuo Ishiguro from <em>Never Let Me Go, </em>during the Toronto International Film Festival in Guess Portrait Studio at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Toronto, Canada. (© Jeff Vespa/WireImage)</figcaption></figure><p>The book was published in 1989 to enthusiastic critical acclaim and enormous sales on both sides of the Atlantic. Any concern about supporting himself at a day job was now over, and he would be able to devote the rest of his working life to literature. <em>The Remains of the Day</em> received the English-speaking world’s highest literary honor, the Booker Prize (now known as the Man Booker Prize). A sensitive film adaptation of the novel was a commercial success and received eight Oscar nominations.</p> <figure id="attachment_43917" style="width: 1754px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43917 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the-buried-giant.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43917 lazyload" alt="" width="1754" height="2560" data-sizes="(max-width: 1754px) 100vw, 1754px" data-srcset="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the-buried-giant.jpg 1754w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the-buried-giant-260x380.jpg 260w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the-buried-giant-521x760.jpg 521w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the-buried-giant.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2015: <em>The Buried Giant</em> by Kazuo Ishiguro. 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.</figcaption></figure><p>By age 35, Ishiguro had won Britain’s top literary honors. He was a bestselling author and entitled to enjoy the fruits of his success. Not only was he eager to keep writing, he now had the extra challenge of living up to an exalted reputation. Ishiguro startled critics and readers with his next novel, <em>The Unconsoled</em> (1995), a challenging work in stream-of-consciousness prose, describing the travels and travails of a concert pianist in an unnamed Central European country. Critics were sharply divided on the book’s merits — both admirers and detractors invoked the ghost of Franz Kafka — and sales were nowhere near those of <em>The Remains of the Day</em>, but its reputation has grown with the passing years. Ishiguro knew popular success again, experimenting with elements of genre fiction in his next two novels. <em>When We Were Orphans</em> (2000) borrows the form of the detective story for other purposes, while <em>Never Let Me Go</em> (2005) adopts the method of dystopian science fiction. Set in an otherwise recognizable recent past, <em>Never Let Me Go</em> portrays a society where human clones are created and raised to young adulthood, only to be killed so that their organs can be harvested for transplant. The gruesome premise supports a haunting tale of doomed young love. A critical and popular success, it was also made into a compelling motion picture.</p> <figure id="attachment_43888" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43888 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0698.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43888 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="2280" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0698.jpg 2280w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0698-190x190.jpg 190w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0698-380x380.jpg 380w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0698-760x760.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0698.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2017: Awards Council member and British cosmologist Lord Martin Rees presents the Golden Plate Award to Kazuo Ishiguro during the Academy of Achievement’s 52nd annual International Achievement Summit at Claridge’s Hotel.</figcaption></figure><p>Over the years, Ishiguro continued to publish short stories in <em>Granta</em> and <em>The New Yorker</em>. In 2009, he published a collection of new tales: <em>Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall</em>. Ishiguro’s success also enabled him to resume his first creative love, songwriting. With composer and saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, he has written lyrics for a series of acclaimed albums by the jazz vocalist Stacey Kent. Ishiguro credits the discipline of lyric writing with teaching him a number of values he has carried over into his prose writing: a preference for the first person narrator, compression, and the power of things left unsaid.</p> <figure id="attachment_43903" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43903 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889482540.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43903 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889482540.jpg 2280w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889482540-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889482540-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889482540.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">December 10, 2017: Kazuo Ishiguro, 63, Nobel Laureate in Literature, receiving his Nobel Prize medal and diploma from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden at an awards ceremony in the Concert House in Stockholm. In selecting Ishiguro, the Swedish Academy said the author, “in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.” (© TT News Agency/Jonas Ekströmer/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p>Kazuo Ishiguro created an original variation on another popular genre with <em>The Buried Giant</em> (2015), a magical fantasy of Britain in the Dark Ages, praised by <em>The Guardian</em> newspaper as “brave and bizarre.” With his works translated into nearly every language, Ishiguro’s popularity as a writer has grown while his critical reputation remains secure. In 2017, just weeks before attending the Academy of Achievement’s International Achievement Summit in London, Ishiguro learned that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In making the award, the Swedish Nobel Committee noted that his “novels of great emotional force have uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”</p> <figure id="attachment_43905" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43905 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889486722.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43905 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889486722.jpg 2280w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889486722-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889486722-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889486722.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2017: Kazuo Ishiguro showing the Nobel medal to his wife, Lorna MacDougall, and daughter, Naomi Ishiguro, after the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony at the Stockholm Concert Hall in Stockholm, Sweden. (© Jonas Ekströmer/Getty)</figcaption></figure><p>Kazuo Ishiguro lives in London with his wife, Lorna. They have one daughter, Naomi. He continues to write novels and songs, as the world awaits fresh surprises from this master storyteller.</p> </body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 2017 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.author">Author</a></div> <div><a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.novelist">Novelist</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> November 8, 1954 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <div class="page" title="Page 42"> <div class="layoutArea"> <div class="column"> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Japan but moved to England with his parents when he was only five years old. His first two novels, both set in Japan, drew unanimous critical praise, but it was his third novel, set in England, that brought him international acclaim.</p> <p><em>The Remains of the Day</em> portrays the most English of settings and characters, the master and servants of a great country house in the years before World War II. The book’s evocation of a lost way of life, and its brilliantly expressed themes of memory, loss, and the power of heartfelt truths left unspoken, earned its author England’s highest literary honor, the Booker Prize. It sold over a million copies and was made into an acclaimed feature film.</p> <p>Ishiguro’s subsequent works have ranged from the boldly experimental novel <em>The Unconsoled</em> to the dystopian fantasy <em>Never Let Me Go</em> — also made into a feature film. In his 2015 book, <em>The Buried Giant</em>, he explores the mythological Britain of the Dark Ages. With unerring skill and unbridled imagination, Ishiguro continues to surprise and delight his readers as the most daring and inventive novelist of his generation.</p> </div> </div> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/z_rVLxoxAwg?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_44_11_29.Still009-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_44_11_29.Still009-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">Novels of Discovery and Revelation</h2> <div class="sans-2">London, England</div> <div class="sans-2">October 18, 2017</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>When did you first think of becoming a writer?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/4WL6Ppu1cwI?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_40_10_18.Still007-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_40_10_18.Still007-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/passion/">Passion</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: The first thing that really kindled my ambition to do anything like what I’m doing now is when I was 13 and I became fascinated by Bob Dylan. I had been listening to more kind of pop-type music, and then I came across Bob Dylan. And because of my age, I was relatively late coming to him. But then I went back over his catalog, and that’s when I became fascinated by words. And I discovered other great singer-songwriters of that era: Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, some others. But these were very important people for me because of this fascinating relationship between what seemed to be a very literary language and the music form and the way they performed it. And so that’s what I wanted to be. It seemed to be the art form that I aspired to. And I did spend some time playing in folk clubs and to very small audiences. And I actually did a whole thing of carrying around demo tapes to recording companies and making appointments with A&R men. I did that whole thing, but quite rightly I got nowhere.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>The lyrics of songs are so often in the first person, and that’s a point of view that you’ve adopted, too, as a novelist.</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/cgMm1sYUV2g?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_43_39_19.Still008-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_43_39_19.Still008-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/preparation/">Preparation</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: I think I learned an awful lot from writing songs. I wrote over a hundred songs. I still write song lyrics, actually, right now for Stacey Kent, a Grammy-nominated jazz singer. But back then, when I was a teenager, I wrote over a hundred songs. And I think that was part of my apprenticeship to be a writer of fiction. And many of the things I learned writing songs — being this bad singer-songwriter — I think became fundamental to my style as a fiction writer. And one of the things you point out — there is something about that kind of singer-songwriter tradition that is very first-person. More than that, I would say there is something of the atmosphere of just one singer communicating with just a handful of people in a room with an acoustic guitar. That kind of atmosphere, that intimacy, is something I still go for when I’m writing a novel. Also, I think there are many other things I learned at that point. I think the fact that, when you’re writing a song, you don’t have many words to use. I mean you’re very restricted in terms of the amount of words you can use. And because there is performance in music, along with the words, you have to leave a lot of things out in the words. If the words are complete unto themselves, as poetry on the page would be, the thing will not work. So this idea that a lot of the emotion, a lot of the meaning of what you’re doing, is hidden, is between the lines, necessarily had to be between the lines. You have to avoid making things too explicit in the words to leave space for the performance, for the music and the performance — the singing, if you like, and the music — so that they had something important to do. I think these are all things that I took into my writing style, and I think that remains core to my style today.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>You went to </strong><strong>the graduate creative writing program at the University of East Anglia. Those programs weren’t as common in Britain then as they were in America.</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/4NBCLA6OZ4U?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_52_50_28.Still010-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_52_50_28.Still010-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: At the time when I was accepted in the creative writing course at the University of East Anglia, it was the only one in Britain that was an accredited master’s degree. And even at that university, it was not respected. The traditional English dons thought it was a ridiculous thing. It’s only because it was run by this very powerful and esteemed novelist and academic, Malcolm Bradbury, that it was allowed to run. And even then people didn’t apply for it. The year before I went, it didn’t run because nobody had applied, and the same the year after. So there’ll usually be — in my year, there were six, and I think it was the largest ever. And Ian McEwan was famous for having done that course ten years earlier. But beyond that, it wasn’t seen as a respectable way for serious literary British novelists to start a career. It was seen as a very strange idea.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/AfElwPOXwyA?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.01_03_29_25.Still011-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.01_03_29_25.Still011-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>I wasn’t even trying to be a writer at that point, but I’d been working with homeless people in London for a year after I’d left the university from studying my first course. And I thought, “Well, it’d be very nice to do a postgraduate degree.” And I applied to a number of things. That just happened to be the creative writing one. I just came across it almost by chance, and it said that instead of a scholarly thesis, I had to just submit a work of fiction of only 30 pages. So I thought, “Well, this sounds like a much easier task.” But of course, when I got accepted, I started to panic. I thought everybody was, you know — I was going to meet a lot of brilliant, genius, budding writers, and I didn’t have a clue how to do this. And I had been accepted on the strength of a radio drama I had written. So I did actually rather panic. And the summer before I went to the University of East Anglia, I locked myself up in a cottage in the middle of nowhere in the west of England, in Cornwall, in a very remote part of Cornwall. And for four weeks, I just wrote and wrote and wrote. I hardly saw anybody else. And I kind of learned to write.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p>There weren’t texts. It’s hard to believe that there really wasn’t a creative writing industry, if you like. It wasn’t a discipline. I have mixed views about the growth of creative writing as a kind of formal, taught discipline. But anyway, for me that kind of worked. But a lot of things happened to me before I got to that course.</p> <p>And I discovered that I didn’t think it was that big a leap from what I’d been doing already, writing songs and then writing short stories. Some writers talk about their early works, the juvenilia. They often talk about secret novels that are hidden somewhere in their house. That’s rather embarrassing. My equivalent is those songs. I went through my adolescent autobiographical phase in those songs. So when I started to write fiction quite seriously, I came in at a later point. I’d already gone through a lot of the typical phases.</p> <p>So my first novel is told from the point of view of someone very different from me, living in a different era. A Japanese woman in her 60s recording the war years in Japan. Very different to who I was then, a young man living in England in the 1970s. But I think I was able to do that because I had worked through a lot of the typical stages that people go through.</p> <figure id="attachment_43974" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-43974 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-51362488.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-43974 size-full lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="2311" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-51362488.jpg 2280w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-51362488-375x380.jpg 375w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-51362488-750x760.jpg 750w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-51362488.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1995: Kazuo Ishiguro at home in London. He attended the University of Kent (BA, 1978), where he studied English and philosophy; and the University of East Anglia (MA, 1980), where he studied creative writing. Upon graduation, he worked as a residential social worker in London and began to write in his spare time. He gained literary notice when three of his short stories were published in <em>Introductions 7: Stories by New Writers, </em>in 1981. (David Levenson)</figcaption></figure><p><strong>You had unusually early success as a writer of fiction, having your first novel published, and then the second novel won major awards. And then <em>The Remains of the Day</em> won the Booker Prize. That great good fortune near the beginning of your career, what effect might that have had on you as a writer?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: I felt it was almost entirely positive for me. I felt it took pressure off me. You know, I didn’t have to worry about winning prizes. There was something about the climate in those days. I know that literary prizes have always been around in Britain, as well as in the United States and everywhere else. But somehow they came into the public eye in a big way around the time when I started to write.</p> <p>The idea that novelists could almost be showbiz was introduced into the air and people were being signed up for big advances and so on. The book prizes became quite glamorous things in that era. So if you were seen to be a rising young novelist, there was enormous pressure in terms of prizes. I think there’s a parallel here with rising classical musicians. They have to win music competitions. Something almost like that was going around, I would say, in Britain in the 1980s.</p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/mc67Q5dnzIQ?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_30_46_14.Still005-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_30_46_14.Still005-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/integrity/">Integrity</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>I felt that winning all the major prizes by the time I was in my mid-30s just took away that pressure because I always feared that it would distort my artistic direction. It would make me cowardly; it would make me play safe. My novels could become a series of applications for prizes, trying to second-guess what juries would like and what they wouldn’t like. So looking back now, I feel it was a real blessing that I got the prizes out of the way. Of course, I never expected to win the Nobel, so I thought — by the time I won the Booker at the age of 34, I thought, “Well, I’ve done the prizes; now I can just forget about prizes.” And I think that’s quite important because I think there’s something about writing. One of the great joys and powerful things about writing is it’s a solo activity. I love cinema. I admire theater. These are collaborative art forms, and they produce great work. But there’s something special for me about the fact that when someone writes a novel, it’s just one person. When I’m reading a novel, I’m communicating with just a single consciousness. I think that’s very special. And I think, for that reason, it’s kind of important that a person is not exactly left alone, but we shouldn’t think too much about the worldly aspect of a writing career when we’re trying to create. And it’s very difficult not to. You’re human. And to be liberated from worrying about prizes — where you are in the pecking order — I think that, for me, was a tremendous freedom.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>In <em>The</em> <em>Remains of the Day</em>, it’s in the first person, in the voice of this very correct English butler, far removed from your own life, but there’s a way you pull the reader in as well. He says, “I’m sure you know some of the great butlers of our day,” and the reader is in on it. “I’m sure you realize how important it is to have a staff plan.” </strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: Yeah, it is very conscious. It’s a technique thing. The “you” that the narrator in <em>The Remains of the Day,</em> for instance, addresses, that “you” isn’t the reader. In all these books, I like the idea of the narrator addressing a “you” because their perspective is so small that they can’t imagine that they’re addressing anybody outside of their very small world. Stevens is a butler. The “you” he addresses is another butler, or at least another house servant of some sort, who lives in this world of serving in country houses. The reader is kind of eavesdropping on a conversation between this butler and another butler. That’s the effect I want to give.</p> <p>What’s important to me is these books are to a large extent about what happens when your perspective is very narrow. Books like <em>The Remains of the Day</em> and the one before that, they’re about people who desperately want to contribute something to the good of the world. They want to be proud of how their work contributed to something good. And in many ways, they’re very decent people, but because they’re not remarkable in their perceptive powers, because their perspective is so parochial and small, they cannot see where they fit in in the larger historical context. And they find that their lives are compromised. They have contributed unwittingly to bad, or into evil things, and it’s just they’re unlucky. Stevens is unlucky because he happened to live through those fascist years.</p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/D5lYCD7TiJ4?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_02_32_02.Still014-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_02_32_02.Still014-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>It’s not his fault in a way. But his career — his best efforts — are entwined with those of the man he served as a butler, who in this case turned out to be a Nazi sympathizer. So in all of these books it’s very important to me to suggest the narrow perspective, the small world that he cannot see beyond. This is one of the things that I’m trying to portray. I’m trying to say that all of us struggle to see beyond our small world. It’s very difficult for any of us to have a special perspective. We all do jobs just like this butler. Many of us do our best. We work very hard and we create something and we offer up our services or whatever we do to somebody upstairs. And it’s often an act of faith. It will be used well. It will be used for something good, as a company or a boss or a nation, somebody that’s going to use it. You just hope your contribution is going to be used for something good. But we often don’t have the perspective to see what’s really going to happen with our little contribution. That’s the fate of Stevens the butler. I’m trying to suggest that many of us, perhaps most of us are in this situation where morally and politically we’re butlers. So it’s very important for me to create that sense that he can’t imagine addressing somebody other than another house servant.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_43984" style="width: 1646px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43984 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-830085370.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-43984 lazyload" alt="" width="1646" height="1306" data-sizes="(max-width: 1646px) 100vw, 1646px" data-srcset="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-830085370.jpg 1646w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-830085370-380x302.jpg 380w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-830085370-760x603.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-830085370.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">October 13, 1998: (left to right, back row) Authors Victoria Glendinning, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Roddy Doyle; (left to right, front row) Authors Beryl Bainbridge and Nicholas Moseley; at the British Library in London to help mark the 30th anniversary of The Booker Prize for Fiction with an evening of readings and debate. The authors were joined by members of the public for the unique literary event. (Stefan Rousseau/PA/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p><strong>He’s so obsessive about being a fine butler that he forgets to have a life of his own. He comes very close to love and it doesn’t quite happen. It’s a sense of giving up your life for your work and your self-delusion.</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: Many of us do that. That’s part of what the modern world is, it seems to me. It’s not because he’s a wage slave. It’s not because he needs to make the money. It’s because it really matters to him that he does his work well. His sense of dignity, his sense of self-respect, come from that. But being the perfect butler, as he defines it, seems to preclude human love. It precludes a lot of things. But it seems to me a lot of us, a lot of people I meet, we live that kind of life now. I think there are many pressures in the modern world, perhaps even more so than when I wrote that novel, that push people to have those kinds of priorities.</p> <p><strong>You must have done a lot of research for that book before you started writing. </strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: Yes. Yes, yes. This is a big question. I’ve never quite figured this out. When is the best time to actually start doing the actual writing? The writing of the words that go into the book? Never mind how many drafts you’re going to do. When do you actually start the proper writing? If you start too early, you can’t write certain kinds of books. You can’t write that kind of very carefully structured novel where something that happens on page 28 is picked up again on page 94 and there’s a tremendous reverberation. You can’t set things up in that way. You’re kind of improvising. But you can get some kind of strange force out of that kind of serendipity and improvisation, and you can bypass your own senses in a way and surprise yourself, even shock yourself with what comes out. However, as I say, you don’t have the same kind of control.</p> <p>So that question of how much should you know about your story, how much research should you have done — I don’t just mean into the historical background, I mean research into the characters, the relationship your fictional world would have to everyday reality — all these things. How much of that should you already know before you actually start the book? I’ve never been able to settle on a consistent rule about this. I think this is one of the most important decisions for any novelist, putting yourself somewhere on that spectrum. Are you one of the writers, at least for this book, that starts with almost no idea and then you end up with something beautifully messy that you can then shape and reshape if you want? Or do you do quite a lot of planning? Do you know quite a lot of things and then you proceed quite carefully? There are pros and cons to both approaches.</p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/UcVDuGfFDMY?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_17_32_27.Still002-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_17_32_27.Still002-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/preparation/">Preparation</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>So <em>The Remains of the Day,</em> I had to do a lot of just straightforward, kind of historical research, as a scholar would do. I was in the library a lot. I was reading, actually, things written at the time — in the 1920s, 1930s — political pamphlets, biographies of nonentities who thought they were terribly important, and they’d write their autobiography. There were a lot of aristocrats in Britain who felt the world should know all about them. But actually, they were very revealing. I read fascinating things like Sir Oswald Mosley’s autobiography. Mosley was the British fascist, leader of the British Union of Fascists. His justifications for what he had done, later in life — these things were all fascinating. So I did an enormous amount of historical research. Some of it was just for my interest. But then, at some point, I had to start writing my novel. And I did this crash.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_43990" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-43990 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0283.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-43990 size-full lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0283.jpg 2280w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0283-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0283-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0283.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">October 18, 2017: Kazuo Ishiguro addresses the delegates and members during a symposium at the American Academy of Achievement’s 52nd annual International Achievement Summit held at Claridge’s Hotel in London.</figcaption></figure><p><strong>We’ve read that you wrote much of that book in about four weeks in what you called a “crash program.” Could you tell us about that?</strong></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/9Zro9ySePxE?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.01_11_18_10.Still012-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.01_11_18_10.Still012-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/perseverance/">Perseverance</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: I kind of experimented with this idea — my wife colluded in this — that I should actually cut myself off from the outside world for four weeks, as much as was possible. So I didn’t answer the phone. I didn’t go outside. I had an hour off for lunch, two hours for dinner. Then I would go back to work again. I think I used to just get Sundays off. But the idea was, “What would happen if I absolutely incarcerated myself into a tiny room? Would the fictional world become more real than the world outside?” I don’t know why the word “crash” was used, but several other writers picked up on this, and they started to say, “I might try a ‘crash’ now.” There’s no logic to it. But the first time I tried it was for <em>The Remains of the Day</em>, and I think it worked very well, in that, in those four weeks, I think I had all the foundation for the book. Then I had to kind of go back and figure things out, make it more stylish, get that voice right. But all the important things, all the important central artistic decisions, were made in those four weeks.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>You’ve mentioned the impact of listening to a song by Tom Waits when you were writing the last draft of <em>The</em> <em>Remains of the Day</em>. Is that right?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/QoqmpzSvQ1M?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_34_36_18.Still006-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ishiguro-Kazuo-2018-MasterEdit.00_34_36_18.Still006-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: Actually, I had done what I thought was more or less a finished version of <em>The Remains of the Day</em>, but the very buttoned-up narrator, the butler — in that earlier version, he doesn’t quite come through confessing his true emotions. He maintains his front a little bit more effectively than he does in the final version. What made me change my mind was that, between that penultimate version and the final version I handed in, I listened to a song by Tom Waits — another great singer-songwriter, remarkable artist. And this is the power of that art form: it’s performance as well as the actual writing.</p> <p>I was listening to a song called “Ruby’s Arms,” but it could have been any number of Tom Waits songs. And in the middle of that — it’s a song about a soldier just leaving, or somebody, just leaving his girlfriend, sneaking out in the morning to get on a train. But there’s a moment in that when Waits sings the words “although my heart was breaking.” And it’s not so much the words themselves; it’s the way he sings them because Waits sings — his voice sounds like kind of a really rough, tough, hobo-type character, not accustomed to revealing his emotions at all. And it’s the way that this emotion seems to break through all his customary defenses. This is all in that voice. You know that that is not the voice of a man who normally talks about his own heartbreak. But he just cannot hold it back anymore. And this is the power of song when it’s sung by a great singer and he writes great songs. You can do this.</p> <p>And I thought, “Oh, I’d love to — can I do something equivalent in my novel?” So in a novel, there is no singer, but I’ve maintained this very buttoned-up — repressed, you might say — controlled voice of a narrator all the way through. Shouldn’t I let him just break? Shouldn’t I let the big, big emotion break through just once? Would it have an equivalent effect? So I changed things a little bit. I allowed that armor to be pierced. I learn an awful lot from listening to music and songs. I learn a lot from other writers, but I learn a huge amount from watching films and listening to people like Tom Waits and Dylan and Leonard Cohen.</p> </div> </div>     <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>You were born in Japan and moved to the UK as a fairly small child. What impact has that had on you as a writer?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: I’ve never been a writer that actually directly addresses what you might call the immigrant experience or even ethnic identity issues. So it’s more nuanced in my case. I almost predate the era when people thought in these more politicized terms.</p> <p>Our family — I think we were the only Japanese family — it felt to me like we were the only Japanese family in the whole country. I very rarely saw anybody who wasn’t a white English person where we were living. There seemed to be no preconceptions on the part of the people of England at that time about how they should behave towards people like us.</p> <p>My father was a scientist. And I actually fit in very well in this small community in the home counties of England. I became a head choirboy in the local church choir. But I was the only kind of nonwhite kid, if you like, in the area. So I think all these things must have had something to do with the way I looked at the world.</p> <p>I also think I looked at Britain through the eyes of my parents. I was a five-year-old boy when I arrived in Britain. We spoke Japanese at home. I saw the world around me partially through my own experience, but also through the eyes of my parents, who were expecting to return to Japan within a few years. So we didn’t have the attitude of people who had settled. It was very much more: “The natives in this strange country, aren’t they fascinating?”</p> <p>I was always taught to be very respectful of their customs, but at home, these weren’t absolute values. My friends had dos and don’ts — that this was the correct way to behave, and that was not the correct way to behave. It was different for me with Japanese parents. And they’d say, “You be careful because the English think you must always do this in that kind of situation, although we don’t.” So there was always, I think, a slightly different perspective. I grew up with a different slant on the world around me.</p> <p><strong>What was it like in school? Did you feel like an outsider?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: I don’t think I did, partly because I started school at the same time as everybody else. I enjoyed my school years and made lots of friends. So I don’t think it’d be right to say I was an outsider, but I knew that I was actually very conspicuous. I wouldn’t call it fame, but just locally and at school, I was used to the idea that everybody knew who I was — I was the Japanese kid, and I didn’t know them — and that I was very conspicuous.</p> <p>In many instances, I had a very small amount of time to either use that for myself or have it go against me. I think I realized that. So in that sense, I think I was aware of it. But I would say, the English people of that time, in the communities that I was in — this is from 1960 onwards — looking back now, they were remarkably open and tolerant, when you think that this is only 15 years after the end of the Second World War. My parents were welcomed. In fact, my father was invited by the British government to work on research here.</p> <p><strong>What kind of research did your father do?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: He was an oceanographer. He passed away in 2007, but one of the proud things for me is that the machine that he was working on is in a permanent exhibition at the science museum here in London. I feel very proud about that.</p> <p><strong>Did you start writing when you were at school? Were you reading literature and thinking about writing?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: No. No. In fact, I hardly read, to be honest. I was like a typical boy of that time. But I did go to a rather interesting experimental school before I went to a much more traditional secondary school at the age of 11. In that earlier period — it was the 1960s — there was a lot of educational theory going around about modern methods.</p> <p>I think I was one of the beneficiaries of that. I think many people suffered from that academically, but I was a beneficiary, in the sense that a lot of us were left alone to just write stories if that’s what we wanted to do. There was some sort of calculating machine in the corner, and if you were a math genius, you could discover calculus for yourself in the corner.</p> <p>But you could paint in another corner, and you could write stories in another corner. So a bunch of us did do a lot of writing but with very little scrutiny or discipline. I think, most of the time, we threw ink over each other. We were writing kind of spy stories, you know. This was the era of James Bond and things like this, and we were writing our own James Bond stories. But from those times on, I think I always felt that writing could be fun. It wasn’t something that somebody made you do. People could do it. I never feared the blank page.</p> <p><strong>It sounds like writing came easily to you. </strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: Writing doesn’t necessarily come easily to me at the level at which I’m supposed to practice it. If I was just left alone on a deserted island to entertain myself writing stories, I could do it endlessly. It’s only when I feel, “Yes, I’ve got to present something that’s very structured. It has to come up to certain standards. Then, of course, it becomes a massive challenge. I feel it’s very important these days not to just write things for the sake of writing. When I read other people’s writing, I really value the work that seems to say that it <em>had</em> to be written. This person really wanted to communicate this — not that they were just fulfilling a quota, or it’s about time they published another book. There’s a difference between when someone plays a piece of music because it’s really what they want to communicate at that moment and when they’re just doing it because it’s their job or because someone’s put a piece of music in front of them and said, “Play.” But, yeah, underneath it all, I’ve always been quite confident that if you put me in the room and I have to make up a story — if I was back in the cave days — I’d be able to keep going for some time.</p> <p><strong>By the time you applied to East Anglia and started writing stories in that cottage, you must have become something of a reader as well. What had you read by then that influenced you?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: I’d started to read a lot when I did my first degree. I studied literature and philosophy at the University of Kent in Canterbury. That’s where I think I really discovered reading because, as I said, I wasn’t a big reader when I was a child.</p> <p>I realize this because I reread <em>Jane Eyre</em> recently, by Charlotte Brontë. I always suspected that she was the biggest influence on me. It seems unlikely, but I always suspected that. I used to say that in interviews, and people would think I was just being smart and evasive. But I reread <em>Jane Eyre</em> recently, and also <em>Villette</em>, her other great novel. I just came across episode after episode where I thought “Oh my goodness, I just ripped that off from this book!” Perhaps you wouldn’t recognize it, but I did.</p> <p>Certain kinds of techniques, certain moments when you understand that the narrator is crying, not because she tells you, but because somebody watching her makes a remark. All these little things that I thought, “Oh, I used that in that book,” or “Oh, that trick.” I think Charlotte Brontë had an enormous influence on me, and I think it’s something to do with that use of first-person and the evasiveness, the indirectness, of her first-person narrative. I mean this phrase, “the unreliable narrator,” has become very popular in creative writing. So it’s not quite that, but a very subtle use of the relationship between the writer and the book and the reader — something I tuned in on, I homed in on instantly, when I started to read Charlotte Brontë.</p> <p>But I’ll tell you, my favorite author — novelist — is somebody who you probably wouldn’t think had any relationship to me, which is Dostoyevsky. I’ve always loved Dostoyevsky, ever since I first read him. I think he’s one of the reasons I started to read, you know, when I read <em>Crime and Punishment</em> when I was about 17 or 18. Dostoyevsky and Chekhov for me remain like two poles in terms of a way to approach things. I love the messiness of Dostoyevsky, the improvised — I mean a lot of it is a mess, but I like the way that strange, unexpected things have obviously come tumbling out of him that he didn’t want to necessarily have come tumbling out. On the other hand, you know, Chekhov, another great Russian writer, exemplifies the calm, controlled, very carefully structured, understated kind of work. I aspire to them both. They’re two of my great heroes.</p> <p><strong>You read Margaret Drabble, too, didn’t you?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: Yes. Margaret Drabble was very important to me in that — back in, say, 1974, ’75, there weren’t many contemporary British writers. People tended to be either much older, or we were encouraged to read classic novels — Victorian-era novels. So when I was 19, 20, there were two important, I would say, “young” writers. They were both women. One was Ireland’s Edna O’Brien and the other was Margaret Drabble.</p> <p>All the girls I met seemed to have rows of Margaret Drabble books. So, I think, partly I thought this was a good way to impress the girls, that I also read Margaret Drabble books. But then, also, she was very important in that she showed me a way of — I realized that there was a way of writing contemporary fiction; that it didn’t have to be like Victorian fiction or Edwardian fiction. This was a young woman writing about contemporary Britain. Particularly, a novel of hers, <em>Jerusalem the Golden</em>, convinced me that, yes, I could write in a modern language. She seemed to use a lot of the techniques of traditional Victorian fiction, but somehow her writing felt modern.</p> <p>We didn’t have obvious young writer models, writers who were slightly older than us. So Margaret Drabble was somebody who was very important to me, and Edna O’Brien as well, although she was much more kind of Irish, I suppose. So I always mention this, because I think in some ways, Margaret Drabble was talked of rather unfairly. When actually my generation of writers broke through in the early ‘80s, we were seen as the generation that was supposed to replace Margaret Drabble and her generation. Not just literally, but in terms of our concerns in the way of writing. But I always wanted to say, “Look, I’ve always admired Margaret Drabble’s writing,” and I think these days people recognize her for the important writer she is.</p> <p><strong>What do you think you got out of the creative writing program at East Anglia?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: Oh, I got time to write, and I discovered that I really wanted to be a writer. Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter were my two tutors — both, in slightly different ways, remarkable people to have as your tutors. I had a different relationship with them. Malcolm used to run workshops but only once every two or three weeks. With Angela, she appeared in the last six months, and I just had a one-to-one relationship. I used to go to her house in London, and we used to sit around and just talk about anything I wanted to talk about. She would make me lunch, and we would just talk about writing. She didn’t demand that she saw anything I was writing. She was very respectful. I was writing my first novel, <em>A Pale View of Hills</em>. She had been living in Japan not so long before that, and I was writing a book set in Japan in the 1950s. We had a lot to talk about on that front. We had fascinating conversations. Sometimes we challenged each other. These were the things I got. There was no “taught course” element. We didn’t have any exercises.</p> <p>Malcolm Bradbury believed in the blank page. He told me this many times, then and subsequently. He wanted to make people face the blank page. He wanted them to see what happened if, for 12 months, a lot of the excuses, perhaps, that they’d been providing for themselves as to why they hadn’t been getting on with their literary career — but those excuses were suddenly taken away. If they were given ideal conditions to write, would they turn out to be writers? Would they really want to write? I think this is one of the really valuable things about creative writing courses. I think there’s a good chance that people discover if they want to write. Because many people want to be writers. I think more so than ever now because it’s a glamorous and comfortable job if it works well. But a lot of people don’t want to actually write. They just want to be writers. And you can’t really have that title unless you really want to write, in a very deep sense, for its own sake — the work for its own sake. Malcolm believed in putting people in a very quiet, rather dull part of the country and giving them very little else to do other than produce some fiction. And sometimes a lot of people had a very painful experience, including in my year. This carefully nurtured idea that they had of themselves as writers started to dissolve during that year. It was very painful for them, but I think you could argue that’s a very important discovery for some people to make as well.</p> <p><strong>Especially when you’re young.</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: This is one of the things that makes me wary of the creative writing industry at the moment. To some extent, it preys on young people — not necessarily young people — all kinds of people’s delusions, as well as their ambitions. If you’re encouraging people who really have a chance of doing something really good, that’s fine. But if you’re just doing it because you need to make money for your institution and you’re encouraging, particularly, young people, at a crucial point in their lives, to devote their time and energy to an activity — when they could perhaps be studying something else or going a different path — so I have all kinds of reservations about it. But when it works, it works very, very well.</p> <p><strong>Perhaps there’s an analogy to the proliferation of music conservatories in the United States. Every university has one. How many of those kids will get jobs in an orchestra or be a concert pianist?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: Another way of being a writer — or being an actor or being a musician — is to teach. So that’s a natural way for things to proliferate. But you have to be careful when you’re toying with young people’s dreams. I think we owe them a responsibility, and we can’t just exploit that. But as I say, when it works, it works brilliantly. Of course, many great writers have either taught or come through creative writing schools, just as the musicians do.</p> <p><strong>Your dream came true fairly early on as a writer. The short stories you wrote at East Anglia were published. Your first novel was accepted while you were still in school, wasn’t it?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: Yeah. I was still doing the course when I signed the contract with Faber and Faber to finish that first novel.</p> <p><strong>Your editor at Faber, Robert McCrum, wrote a beautiful tribute to you on the announcement of your Nobel Prize. Could you tell us about his relationship to your career?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: Robert McCrum, he’s just over a year older than me, but he had been given — very unusually for the stuffy British publishing scene at that time — he’d been given the top editorial job at this very distinguished company, Faber and Faber, that used to be run by T. S. Eliot. It had a very distinguished backlist, but its fiction list had gone rather moribund. And this very young man — I don’t know how old he was; I guess 27, something — he had been put in charge to find a whole generation of writers for Faber. And I was one of the people he discovered at that stage. I was then 25 years old and doing this writing at the University of East Anglia. I think he discovered Peter Carey around that time and then a whole bunch of people. He was a remarkable reader and editor, and he had a real sense of how to put together a list.</p> <p>My relationship with him — personally, we got along very well. And his technique was — as far as I was concerned — he would do almost no close editorial work. We would have relatively short discussions when I submitted a book. But he had an uncanny way of saying, “This part of your novel, there’s something not quite right about it. I can’t tell quite what you should do about it, but I have a feeling you should go and look at it again.” We worked together on the first four novels. He did that every time, and every time he was right. He had a sense for what was wrong or if something wasn’t quite working, and that’s what I really value in an editor.</p> <p>I have another very important editor; that’s my wife. Robert left publishing after my fourth novel, and now he works as a very prominent literary journalist and an author himself. But my wife has been my consistent critic from before I started to write. We’ve been together for a very long time. So when she sees my writing, she doesn’t see the writing of some famous writer or anything like that. I’m still this upstart kid, this failed singer-songwriter who’s having a go at writing fiction. So she criticizes me in exactly the same way that she did when I was just starting that course at East Anglia.</p> <p><strong>It sounds like you take her criticism quite seriously.</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: We’ve known each other long enough so that we know where we differ fundamentally. So some things she says, I think, “Oh well, that’s our usual…” We’ve agreed to disagree on that kind of thing. But there are many things we agree about. So if it’s on that territory and she says something, however painful it is, I’m tempted to say I have to obey, but I have to listen! I’m not sure if your question is alluding to what was very widely publicized about my latest novel, <em>The Buried Giant</em>. She told me to abandon it after I had been working for a year and a half on it because in its current form it just would not do. She said it just would not do. And this is slightly distressing for me, but I did as she suggested. I just stopped it, and I went and wrote another book, and then I came back to it fresh. That’s one of the more extreme things. But now, I think all of my books — like <em>The Remains of the Day</em> — I think the ending wouldn’t be the ending we have now if she hadn’t told me I had to go off and do the ending again.</p> <p><strong>We want to ask you about </strong><em><strong>Never Let Me Go</strong></em><strong>, which has a science fiction aspect. It takes place in a sort of alternative version of our world. Where did that come from?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: Well, <em>Never Let Me Go</em>, I think it was published in 2005. I started to write it, I think, about 2001. Now the date is very important because I would say, for a lot of my literary life, up to that point, I was under the impression that science fiction was a kind of a genre I shouldn’t go near. I didn’t consciously examine that assumption. I think it was just something that I had imbibed, being a writer of my generation. It was not a genre that was studied at universities unless you think of something like <em>1984</em> by George Orwell as dystopian, and therefore approaching sci-fi, but it wasn’t a respected genre.</p> <p>But then I started to make friends with writers who I really admired who were about 15, 16 years younger than me — the novelist David Mitchell; Alex Garland, who wrote <em>The Beach</em> and is now a terrific film director. He made the movie <em>Ex Machina </em>recently — directed and wrote it — and he indeed adapted <em>Never Let Me Go</em> for the screen as a screenwriter. But when I first met these guys, they did not have this prejudice about science fiction, far from it. They were lapping it up hungrily for inspiration. They seemed to like graphic novels or comics. I could see a huge energy coming from this generation, and they showed me that it was all right. In fact, it was more than all right, it was almost foolish not to pay attention to this whole body of literature.</p> <p>I think around that time, too, of course — like everybody — I became aware that the world was actually changing rapidly. The technological information revolution was all around us and not just that, but we were aware that remarkable things were happening in biotechnology, artificial intelligence. Suddenly sci-fi, far from being some sort of lowbrow, geeky, despised genre, seemed to be the natural place one should look. And I think I was really grateful towards that younger generation because they kind of gave me permission, as a writer already approaching 50, to use a kind of sci-fi premise. Because <em>Never Let Me Go</em> was a novel I had tried to write twice before, several years earlier, and I just could not get the metaphorical world in which the book could take place.</p> <p><strong><br/> </strong>I toyed with the idea of young people who came across nuclear materials and so, their lifespans had been limited, but it didn’t really work. I tried various things like that. It’s only when I thought, “Actually, it’s all right to kind of do science fiction.” Around that time, a sheep had been created — Dolly the sheep — purely through genetic cloning. I thought, “What if my characters were clones who were created solely to provide organs, and that their fate was to lose organs gradually while they were still young?” I thought, “Well, actually, this is kind of like sci-fi, but there’s something awfully familiar about this concept.” It’s actually the human condition. All of us, we know that we have limited lives and that, even if we’re lucky, at some point we’re going to lose control over bits of ourselves physically, and then we’ll go. So the big question becomes, “What is important when you realize your time is limited?” How do human beings behave? How do they prioritize when they’re aware that time is very limited? So I thought, “I’ll create this very strange concertina version of a human lifespan in <em>Never Let Me Go</em> — sort of young people who are effectively old people. Let’s take them through all their stages that the lucky ones go through in 70, 80, 90 years — take them through that in 25 years. What becomes important to them? What really matters to human beings?”</p> <p><strong>Do you think your work has been influenced by the work you did with the homeless as a young man? That’s a unique segment of humanity, isn’t it?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: All in all, I worked with homeless people for about a total of two years because I went back to doing that kind of work after I finished my first novel. Homeless people are not necessarily a category apart at all. They’re very different from each other. They’re homeless for all kinds of different reasons. They have many problems in common by virtue of the fact that they’re homeless. But often there’s a primary problem that’s causing them to be homeless: mental illness, drug addiction, and alcoholism, domestic violence, whatever. All kinds of different things are happening to them, and that brings them to this place where they’re homeless. So I think, in a way, I feel slightly guilty about this. I feel guilty about the fact that I learned so much about people suffering in different kinds of ways in a very short period of time. If somebody devised a kind of a course, like a university course, to allow you to get an insight into how ordinary people break up under the pressure of life, then you could do a lot worse than working in the homelessness project.</p> <p>I was living and working in this hostel where people were coming in. Of course, like a lot of my colleagues, I was doing my best to help them, but I’m very aware of the fact that I was in that for about two years, and then I left it. It’s almost like I had another university course or a piece of education in people from all kinds of walks of life. Part of me feels like I exploited them, that I watched them; I saw them at their most vulnerable. I listened to their stories. I left and then became a novelist. I’ve never written directly about homeless people, but obviously, it affects the way I see things, the way I see society, the way I see political structures. But to this day, I’ve never written directly about those people or the work I did there. I learned a lot from those people. A lot of those people were intelligent and perceptive.</p> <p><strong>You often tell your story from the point of view of a narrator who is unlike yourself: a middle-aged woman in your first novel, </strong><em><strong>A Pale View of Hills</strong></em><strong>, or the butler in </strong><em><strong>The Remains of the Day</strong></em><strong>. Why is that?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: I’m not the kind of writer who directly reveals something about myself autobiographically through an alter-ego character. I think you’ll struggle to find any character who is like me in real life. But my books, those novels, are me. I express myself through those novels as a whole, not through any single character. The emotions I try and express, the perspectives I try and present, I feel that they’re who I am. What I’m trying to say is, “This is how I feel about life. I presented you with a story about a certain area of our experience, and these are the feelings I have about it. Isn’t it the case? Don’t you feel that, too?” And that’s not a rhetorical question. I’m actually really asking that. I’m saying, “Is it just me, or do you feel this, too? Do we have a point of connection here? Because it strikes me it’s like this.” Sometimes I’m trying to access — not obvious emotions sometimes — nuanced emotions that perhaps people haven’t been aware of having, but it’s been a large part of them. I feel that’s what I try to do in my books. Obviously, there’s an element of novels — because they use words that contain argument or that represent a piece of history about the real world out there — but essentially I’m a writer of fiction. I’m not an essayist. I’m not a historian. I write fiction, which means I’m trying to connect with people through feelings. I’m trying to appeal to that thing which we all have as human beings. Never mind the different borders and walls we erect.</p> <p><strong>Do you think fiction is more important for us in that respect than fact?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: We need both, of course, don’t we? I mean we can’t get by in the world simply with facts. We need the facts. In some ways, you’d argue that they’ve become more elusive than ever right now. We need the facts, but we also need to know what it feels like to live with those facts. It’s not just enough to know that some people are hungry. We have to have a sense of the pain of being hungry. Otherwise, we can’t make the decisions. We can’t relate to each other properly. I think fiction, music or the arts can do something about reminding us that we have human connections and we share feelings with each other. And yes, I think it’s very important that we also have a way of communicating how things feel.</p> <p><strong>This is a particularly divisive time politically in both the U.S. and the UK. Is this an especially important time, in 2017, to be bringing out those feelings or a sense of shared humanity?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: I think it’s always very important. These are very troubling times, but let’s not exaggerate. If you look at the world for the first half of the 20th century, particularly in Europe, it’s a hellish place. Europe, for the first 50 years of the 20th century, makes the Middle East right now look like paradise. It was butchery and slaughter and the most horrific mass crimes. I think you could almost say there was a failure of culture there. The irony was that these things exploded in a part of the world where culture was rather proud of itself, where the great composers and the great novelists and great playwrights all came from, and it was supposed to be the height of civilization. So it kind of makes people like me nervous about over-claiming for what things like novels — certainly my novels — can do in a practical sense to stop conflict and war.</p> <p>On the other hand, I can’t help thinking that, yes, it is very important that we share things at the level that art can help us share things. Perhaps because our works can cross barriers more easily because of great translators, because of a more internationalized publishing world and film world and television world, and because of the digital age, maybe there’s a chance for the positive things about culture to have more of a real practical effect. But I do worry about the world as it is right now in 2017. In my lifetime it’s certainly one of the more worrying moments politically and socially, I would say. We don’t have the time now to theorize about all the things that might be behind it.</p> <p>But one of the great achievements, I think, of the second half of the 20th century, in Europe, was to turn a place of utter carnage and hatred into a place of much-envied liberal democracies, living in a kind of more or less borderless harmony. That is a complete miracle. We seem to be retreating from that achievement, it seems to me. I don’t just mean because Britain has voted to leave Europe. I mean something bigger than that. There’s something happening right away across Europe. People are retreating into ethnic nationalisms. And I would dare say that there is something comparable happening in the United States as well.</p> <p>People seem to find it difficult to unite behind large ways to see themselves as a community. I think there’s almost a fear that people will be left exposed unless they can find a little camp that they can join and from which they can lobby especially. It’s almost like a children’s party. A kid arrives at a children’s party, and everyone’s having a good time together, and then suddenly a child realizes that everyone is divided up into little camps. And then there’s a fear you’ve got to join one of these camps; otherwise, you’re going to be left out. These camps are vying against each other, so everyone rushes in fear to these little groups. I kind of feel that, for some reason — many complicated reasons — we seem to be going through that phase in the Western world at the moment.</p> <p><strong>It’s been a very positive week for you, as we sit here in the middle of October 2017. You won the Nobel Prize a week ago. What was that like? What were you doing when you got the call?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: The eccentric thing about the Swedish Academy is that they announce the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature — I don’t know what they do in the other categories — but as far as Literature is concerned, they like to announce it to the world press before they let the actual recipient know. I’m not the kind of person who gets up in the morning wondering if I’ve won the Nobel Prize. I didn’t know that the announcement was going to be that day. I didn’t know anything, you know. It wasn’t in my mind. It wasn’t on my horizon. I was just having a normal day. I came down. I hadn’t had a shower. My breakfast stuff was around me. I was writing an email at the kitchen table and the phone rang.</p> <p>It wasn’t the Swedish Academy. It was people, various people who had heard the announcement made in Swedish and thought they heard my name in the middle of all that Swedish, but they weren’t sure. So it was very uncertain. And this long email I was writing to a friend in China actually tails off — I mean we were going through a lot of stuff — it actually tails, “I’ve got to go now. I might have won the Nobel Prize!”</p> <p>It was literally like that. The alarming thing was, within about half an hour, there was a long line of press people with cameras and things, from our front door, going up the suburban street. I don’t know what the neighbors thought had happened. They probably thought I turned into an ax-murderer and I was going to be led out handcuffed with a raincoat over my head.</p> <p>I was in the house alone. I had to actually call the hairdresser where my wife was. She was about to change her hair color. She had been building up to changing her hair color for about two months. This was a big moment for her, and I had to actually pull her out of the hairdresser. I said, “I need some help here. I can’t cope with this.” And she came, and then somebody came from the publisher. My agent came and we had a press conference in the backyard. That’s how chaotic it was. It was absolutely crazy.</p> <p><strong>Did you get to take a shower before the press conference?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: No. No. No. I mean all the photographs there — I am just the way I was that morning. So the lesson I learned from that is: have a shower early; do not sit at the kitchen table assuming that there will be time after breakfast. There won’t be. Do it first thing, just in case you’re given the Nobel Prize and the world’s press turns up in your garden.</p> <p><strong>How did it feel? What did it mean to you?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: I haven’t really had much time to process it yet because it’s only about a week and a half ago, and I had a very busy schedule lined up anyway before the Nobel thing happened. So it’s just been really crazy. At some point, I’m going to stop and think about what it actually means. But I think it means a lot to me. It meant a lot to me straight away, not just because many of the greatest writers I can think of have gone before me and won this prize, but also, I think there is something about the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Prize which stands for — I think it stands for something pretty decent.</p> <p>Perhaps it is something that can help towards goodwill and bringing people together at a difficult time. To me, the Nobel Prize centers around the Peace Prize that its history is about: Alfred Nobel, having invented dynamite and seeing the actual negative effects of that, as well as positive effects of wanting to leave this vastly profitable estate to help world peace.</p> <p>There are all these other categories, but I think when you win a prize, I think it’s very important who has given it to you. Do you respect the institution that’s giving it to you? The other thing is, do you admire the people who’ve already won this prize? In both cases, I think — as with the American Academy of Achievement, which is why I’m here speaking to you — if you admire what the institution stands for, then the prize becomes something very valuable. I have turned down prizes in the past because I didn’t want to receive the honor from the people who were offering it to me. But when you receive it from people you really respect, then you feel you’re truly honored. Also, when you walk in the footsteps of such wonderful people — it’s cliché, but you do really feel humbled. So that applies to tonight at the American Academy of Achievement, when I’m receiving an honor, and it will be the same thing when I go to Stockholm to pick up the Nobel award.</p> <p><strong>One of your early heroes, Bob Dylan, was the surprise winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature just last year.</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: I thought that was wonderful. I know he was a little controversial, but I really admire the Swedish Academy’s courage in doing that. When I go to Stockholm, this is one of the things I want to really find out. The question I want an answer to really is: “Was Bob Dylan being honored just for his lyrics as though they were written poetry? Are we being encouraged to just ignore the rest of what he does?” And almost incidentally, he used his lyrics as poetry, like the poetry of T. S. Eliot or Seamus Heaney. It’s great. Is that why he is being given the Nobel Prize, or is it a recognition for an art form which, I think, really came of age in the 1960s and 1970s?</p> <p>This singer-songwriter art form, which found its moment, I think, with the LP record, sophistication of recording techniques — this coming together of literature, music, performance — it’s an art form that perhaps should be called “literature alongside fiction, poetry, and drama.” At the moment, people just think it’s just those three things, literature, but maybe it’s time to recognize that this has been one of the really important art forms of the past 60 or 70 years and that artists like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, they are very, very significant and important artists. Certainly from my generation they are.</p> <p>I can’t think of quite how to categorize them if they are not part of literature. I’m not quite sure what they would be, but I think they should be part of literature. So I like to think that the Nobel Prize for Dylan was also a recognition of what he does. He’s a great singer, he’s a great songwriter, he’s a great bandleader. I’m hoping that’s what it means, not that he was a great poet on the page.</p> <p><strong>In another interview, you said that one charm of the songs of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan is that no one can understand what they’re talking about. Your comment may have been tongue-in-cheek, but is there some truth to it?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: I think I related to that very much at the time because I was an adolescent and the whole world was like that. It seemed to kind of have meaning and not have meaning, and I kind of put it down to my not being mature enough to understand the world.</p> <p>Lyrics that seem to have intentionality and direction and authority, but didn’t make a whole lot of sense, kind of summed up my experience in the world. That certainly was part of the appeal, I would say, for a lot of people of my age at the time, why we were drawn to the more, let’s say, abstract songs of Dylan and Leonard Cohen rather than clearer songs like the protest songs that Dylan did earlier on. Everyone knows what that’s about. But by the time you get to <em>Blonde on Blonde</em> or <em>Highway 61</em>, things start to become very modern and very abstract. I think that was an exhilarating feeling, not just because of the age I was, but I think that there’s something to do with the era in which we lived. There was a feeling that in the late 1960s, early 1970s, the whole world was opening up, which our parents didn’t understand, which <em>we</em> didn’t understand, but it was exciting. And I think we wanted, perhaps, the lyrics in an art form that reflected that, an exhilaration of adventure and exploration and meaning that is just slightly beyond our grasp.</p> <p><strong>Before we go, do you have any advice for young writers or aspiring writers?</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: This is always very difficult because this might feel like an evasion, but I feel it’s very important that young writers figure out their own way of writing. That generation needs to find a way of writing that’s right for them that will teach me as a member of the older generation.</p> <p>I’m 62; I’ll be going on to 63 soon. They shouldn’t be looking to people like me. They have to invent something for themselves that reflects their world. They understand what it’s like to be the age they are today in a world that’s rapidly changing in every sense. I want them to show me what literature can be. Don’t come to me for it. You teach me where literature is going.</p> <p>It’s their turn. They’ve got to invent it for themselves. So I don’t want them to listen to my advice. That sounds a bit of an evasion, but I think that’s right. I think every generation of artists has got to do it for themselves and take themselves seriously and with confidence. It’s not always helpful that the old guard hand out advice.</p> <p>Having said that, I will just say one thing, and I’ll go back to that point I was making about creative writing classes. There are so many people that want to be writers. It wasn’t like that when I was younger. Everyone wanted to be a rock star or something much more sensible when I was young! But now everyone wants to be a writer of some sort, and many want to be fiction writers. I would ask that very fundamental question, “Do you really want to write, or do you just want the status of being a writer?” Because it would only work for you if you really, really want to write, and it’s not for everybody. You will be frustrated. You will lose a sense of who you are and what you should do in the world if you press on with the idea of being a writer when you don’t even want to write. So I think that’s the biggest question people have to ask themselves if they’re starting out. Not “Do you want to be a writer?” but “Do you want to write?”</p> <p><strong>That was superb. Thank you so much.</strong></p> <p>Kazuo Ishiguro: Thank you.</p> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">Kazuo Ishiguro Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>15 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0283.jpg" data-image-caption="October 2017: Kazuo Ishiguro addresses the delegates and members during a symposium at the American Academy of Achievement’s 52nd annual International Achievement Summit held at Claridge’s Hotel in London. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wp-LondonSummit_0283" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0283-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0283-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.79342105263158" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-830085370.jpg" data-image-caption="October 13, 1998: (left to right, back row) Authors Victoria Glendinning, Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro and Roddy Doyle; (left to right, front row) Authors Beryl Bainbridge and Nicholas Moseley, at the British Library in London to help mark the 30th anniversary of The Booker Prize for Fiction with an evening of readings and debate. The authors were joined by members of the public for the unique literary event. (Stefan Rousseau/PA/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="AUTHORS: 30TH BOOKER ANNIVERSARY" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-830085370-380x302.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-830085370-760x603.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.0133333333333" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-51362488.jpg" data-image-caption="1995: Kazuo Ishiguro at home in London. He attended the University of Kent (BA, 1978), where he studied English and philosophy; and the University of East Anglia (MA, 1980), where he studied creative writing. Upon graduation, he worked as a residential social worker in London and began to write in his spare time. He gained literary notice when three of his short stories were published in <i>Introductions 7: Stories by New Writers</i>, in 1981. (David Levenson)" data-image-copyright="Writer Kazuo Ishiguro at home" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-51362488-375x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-51362488-750x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5702479338843" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/remains-of-the-day-2.jpg" data-image-caption="1989: <i>The Remains of the Day</i>, Kazuo Ishiguro’s third novel — which he wrote in four weeks — is a portrait of a perfect English butler and of his fading, insular world in post-war England. At the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, Stevens embarks on a country drive, during which he looks back over his career to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving "a great gentleman." But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington’s "greatness" and graver doubts about his own faith in the man he has served. Kazuo Ishiguro was awarded the Man Booker Prize for <i>The Remains of the Day</i> in 1989, and the novel was adapted into an eight-time Oscar-nominated motion picture in 1993 starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson." data-image-copyright="remains of the day 2" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/remains-of-the-day-2-242x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/remains-of-the-day-2-484x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0698.jpg" data-image-caption="2017: Awards Council member and British cosmologist Lord Martin Rees presents the Golden Plate Award to Kazuo Ishiguro during the Academy of Achievement’s 52nd annual International Achievement Summit at Claridge’s Hotel. (© Academy of Achievement)" data-image-copyright="wp-LondonSummit_0698" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0698-380x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-LondonSummit_0698-760x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4587332053743" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the-buried-giant.jpg" data-image-caption="2015: <i>The Buried Giant</i> by Kazuo Ishiguro. 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." data-image-copyright="the buried giant" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the-buried-giant-260x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/the-buried-giant-521x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3595706618962" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-857836026.jpg" data-image-caption="Japanese-born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro playing the electric piano at his home in London. Ishiguro was born in the city of Nagasaki, southwestern Japan, and moved to Britain when he was five. (Kyodo News via Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro wins Nobel Prize in literature" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-857836026-280x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-857836026-559x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4421252371917" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-830101308-1.jpg" data-image-caption="October 10, 1989: Kazuo Ishiguro, with his book <i>The Remains of the Day</i>, at an awards ceremony held at medieval Guildhall in London, where he was awarded the Man Booker Prize. (Photo Credit: PA Images via Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="wp-GettyImages-830101308 (1)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-830101308-1-263x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-830101308-1-527x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5734989648033" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/when-we-were-orphans.jpg" data-image-caption="2000: <i>When We Were Orphans</i> by Kazuo Ishiguro tells the story of Christopher Banks, an English boy born in early 20th-century Shanghai, who is orphaned at age nine when his mother and father both vanish under suspicious circumstances. Sent to live in England, he grows up to become a renowned detective and, more than 20 years later, returns to Shanghai, where the Sino-Japanese War is raging, to solve the mystery of the disappearances." data-image-copyright="when we were orphans" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/when-we-were-orphans-242x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/when-we-were-orphans-483x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889482540.jpg" data-image-caption="December 10, 2017: Kazuo Ishiguro, 63, Nobel Laureate in Literature, receiving his Nobel Prize medal and diploma from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden at an awards ceremony in the Concert House in Stockholm. In selecting Ishiguro, the Swedish Academy said the author, “in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.” (© TT News Agency/Jonas Ekströmer/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="NOBEL-PRIZES-SWEDEN" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889482540-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889482540-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5734989648033" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/never-let-me-go.jpg" data-image-caption="2005: <i>Never Let Me Go</i> by Kazuo Ishiguro is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In 2010, the film adaptation of the novel was released, co-starring actors Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, and Andrew Garfield." data-image-copyright="never let me go" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/never-let-me-go-241x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/never-let-me-go-483x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67894736842105" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-104051870.jpg" data-image-caption="September 13, 2010: Producer Andrew Macdonald, actress Carey Mulligan, writer Alex Garland, director Mark Romanek, producer Allon Reich and author Kazuo Ishiguro from <i>Never Let Me Go</i>, during the Toronto International Film Festival in Guess Portrait Studio at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Toronto, Canada. (© Jeff Vespa/WireImage)" data-image-copyright=""Never Let Me Go" Portraits - 2010 Toronto International Film Festival" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-104051870-380x258.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-104051870-760x516.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889486722.jpg" data-image-caption="2017: Kazuo Ishiguro showing the Nobel medal to his wife, Lorna MacDougall, and daughter, Naomi Ishiguro, after the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony at the Stockholm Concert Hall in Stockholm, Sweden. (© Jonas Ekströmer/Getty)" data-image-copyright="NOBEL-PRIZES-SWEDEN" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889486722-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/wp-GettyImages-889486722-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5702479338843" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/an-artist-of-the-floating-world.jpg" data-image-caption="1986: <i>An Artist of the Floating World</i> by Kazuo Ishiguro. Set in post-World War II Japan, narrator Masuji Ono, a respected artist in the 1930s and during the war, but now retired, is garrulously recalling the past. He notices how his once great reputation has faltered since the war and how the attitudes towards him and his paintings have changed. The novel was shortlisted for the 1986 Booker Prize and won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award." data-image-copyright="an artist of the floating world" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/an-artist-of-the-floating-world-242x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/an-artist-of-the-floating-world-484x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5734989648033" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/a-pale-view-of-hills.jpg" data-image-caption="1982: In his highly acclaimed debut novel, <i>A Pale View of Hills</i>, 27-year-old Ishiguro tells the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. Etsuko relives scenes of Japan’s devastation in the wake of World War II. The novel won the 1982 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize." data-image-copyright="a pale view of hills" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/a-pale-view-of-hills-241x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2018/03/a-pale-view-of-hills-483x760.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared 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</article> <div class="modal image-modal fade" id="imageModal" tabindex="-1" role="dialog" aria-labelledby="imageModal" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="close-container"> <div class="close icon-icon_x" data-dismiss="modal" aria-label="Close"></div> </div> <div class="modal-dialog" role="document"> <div class="modal-content"> <div class="modal-body"> <figure class="image-modal__container"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <img class="image-modal__image" src="/web/20190103172847im_/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro" alt=""/>  <figcaption class="p-t-2 container"> <div class="image-modal__caption sans-2 text-white"></div>  </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </div> </div> </div> </div> </main> </div> </div> <footer class="content-info main-footer bg-black"> <div class="container"> <div class="find-achiever" id="find-achiever-list"> <div class="form-group"> <input id="find-achiever-input" class="search js-focus" placeholder="Search for an 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Ballard, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-roger-bannister-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Roger Bannister</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-banville/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Banville</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ehud-barak/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ehud Barak</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lee-r-berger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lee R. Berger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-timothy-berners-lee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Tim Berners-Lee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/yogi-berra/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Yogi Berra</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jeffrey-p-bezos/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeffrey P. Bezos</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/benazir-bhutto/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benazir Bhutto</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/simone-biles/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Simone Biles</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/keith-l-black/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Keith L. Black, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/elizabeth-blackburn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Elizabeth Blackburn, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-boies-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Boies</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/norman-e-borlaug/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman E. Borlaug, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/benjamin-c-bradlee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benjamin C. Bradlee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sergey-brin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sergey Brin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carter-j-brown/"><span class="achiever-list-name">J. Carter Brown</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/linda-buck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linda Buck, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carol-burnett/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Burnett</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-h-w-bush/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George H. W. Bush</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/susan-butcher/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Susan Butcher</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-cameron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Cameron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/benjamin-s-carson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benjamin S. Carson, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-carter/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Carter</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-cash/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Cash</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/william-j-clinton/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William J. Clinton</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/francis-s-collins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/denton-a-cooley/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Denton A. Cooley, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/francis-ford-coppola/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis Ford Coppola</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-dalio/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Dalio</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/olivia-de-havilland/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Olivia de Havilland</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/michael-e-debakey-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael E. DeBakey, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/michael-dell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael S. Dell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-dennis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Dennis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joan Didion</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-herbert-donald-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Herbert Donald, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-doubilet/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Doubilet</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rita-dove/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rita Dove</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sylvia-earle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/elbaradei/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mohamed ElBaradei</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-j-ellison/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry J. Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-s-fauci-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-norman-foster/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Norman Foster</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/aretha-franklin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Aretha Franklin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leymah-gbowee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leymah Gbowee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-ghosn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Ghosn</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Glück</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-john-gurdon/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir John Gurdon</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Demis Hassabis, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kazuo Ishiguro</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/beverly-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Beverly Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dereck-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dereck Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-kagame/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Kagame</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Lederman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernst-mayr-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leon-panetta/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Panetta</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/itzhak-perlman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Itzhak Perlman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Martin Rees</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonny Rollins</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-romero/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony Romero</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Rosenquist</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pete-rozelle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pete Rozelle</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/bill-russell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bill Russell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/albie-sachs/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Albie Sachs</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/oliver-sacks-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oliver Sacks, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jonas-salk-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jonas Salk, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frederick-sanger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-b-schaller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George B. Schaller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/barry-scheck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Barry Scheck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-evans-schultes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-h-norman-schwarzkopf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-schwarzman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen A. Schwarzman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/glenn-t-seaborg-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Glenn T. Seaborg, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/neil-sheehan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Neil Sheehan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-alan-shepard-jr/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral Alan B. Shepard, Jr., USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ellen-johnson-sirleaf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ellen Johnson Sirleaf</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-slim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Slim Helú</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frederick-w-smith/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick W. Smith</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-sondheim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Sondheim</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sonia-sotomayor/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonia Sotomayor</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wole-soyinka/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wole Soyinka</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/esperanza-spalding/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Esperanza Spalding</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/martha-stewart/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Martha Stewart</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-james-b-stockdale/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral James B. Stockdale, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/hilary-swank/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hilary Swank</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/amy-tan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Amy Tan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dame-kiri-te-kanawa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Kiri Te Kanawa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/edward-teller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Teller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/twyla-tharp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Twyla Tharp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wayne-thiebaud/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wayne Thiebaud</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lt-michael-e-thornton-usn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Michael E. Thornton, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/charles-h-townes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Charles H. Townes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-trimble/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Trimble</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ted-turner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert Edward (Ted) Turner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/desmond-tutu/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Archbishop Desmond Tutu</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-updike/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Updike</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/gore-vidal/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gore Vidal</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/antonio-villaraigosa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Antonio Villaraigosa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lech-walesa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lech Walesa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/herschel-walker/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Herschel Walker</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-d-watson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James D. Watson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/andrew-weil-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Andrew Weil, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leslie-h-wexner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leslie H. Wexner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/elie-wiesel/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Elie Wiesel</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/edward-o-wilson-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward O. Wilson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/oprah-winfrey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oprah Winfrey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tom-wolfe/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tom Wolfe</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-wooden/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Wooden</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/bob-woodward/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bob Woodward</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/shinya-yamanaka-m-d-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shinya Yamanaka, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-chuck-yeager/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Chuck Yeager, USAF</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/andrew-young/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Andrew J. Young</span></a> </li> </ul> <div class="list__close"></div> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 col-lg-3"> <ul id="menu-footer-menu-col-1" class="menu list-unstyled"><li class="menu-item menu-item-has-children menu-our-history"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/our-history/">Our History</a> <ul class="sub-menu"> <li class="menu-item menu-about-the-academy"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/our-history/">About the Academy</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-academy-patrons"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/our-history/patrons/">Academy Patrons</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-delegate-alumni"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190103172847/http://www.achievement.org/our-history/alumni/">Delegate Alumni</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-directors-our-team"><a 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