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› Find signed collectible books: 'Never Let Me Go'
From the acclaimed author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, a moving new novel that subtly reimagines our world and time in a haunting story of friendship and love.
As a child, Kathynow thirty-one years oldlived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory.
And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbedeven comfortedby their isolation. But she describes other scenes as well: of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind Hailshams nurturing facade. With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhoodand about their lives now.
A tale of deceptive simplicity, Never Let Me Go slowly reveals an extraordinary emotional depth and resonanceand takes its place among Kazuo Ishiguros finest work. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Pale View of Hills'
As she considers her daughter's suicide, a Japanese woman living alone in England finds herself retreating into the past and reliving one hot summer in Nagasaki, when she and her friends tried to rebuild their lives after the war. From the author of AN ARTIST OF THE FLOATING WORLD, THE REMAINS OF THE DAY and THE UNCONSOLED. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Remains of the Day'
The novel's narrator, Stevens, is a perfect English butler who tries to give his narrow existence form and meaning through the self-effacing, almost mystical practice of his profession. In a career that spans the second World War, Stevens is oblivious of the real life that goes on around him -- oblivious, for instance, of the fact that his aristocrat employer is a Nazi sympathizer. Still, there are even larger matters at stake in this heartbreaking, pitch-perfect novel -- namely, Stevens' own ability to allow some bit of life-affirming love into his tightly repressed existence. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'When We Were Orphans'
When 9-year-old Christopher Banks's father--a British businessman involved in the opium trade--disappears from the family home in Shanghai, the boy and his friend Akira play at being detectives: "Until in the end, after the chases, fist-fights and gun-battles around the warren-like alleys of the Chinese districts, whatever our variations and elaborations, our narratives would always conclude with a magnificent ceremony held in Jessfield Park, a ceremony that would see us, one after another, step out onto a specially erected stage ... to greet the vast cheering crowds."
But Christopher's mother also disappears, and he is sent to live in England, where he grows up in the years between the world wars to become, he claims, a famous detective. His family's fate continues to haunt him, however, and he sifts through his memories to try to make sense of his loss. Finally, in the late 1930s, he returns to Shanghai to solve the most important case of his life. But as Christopher pursues his investigation, the boundaries between fact and fantasy begin to evaporate. Is the Japanese soldier he meets really Akira? Are his parents really being held in a house in the Chinese district? And who is Mr. Grayson, the British official who seems to be planning an important celebration? "My first question, sir, before anything else, is if you're happy with the choice of Jessfield Park for the ceremony? We will, you see, require substantial space."
In When We Were Orphans Kazuo Ishiguro uses the conventions of crime fiction to create a moving portrait of a troubled mind, and of a man who cannot escape the long shadows cast by childhood trauma. Sherlock Holmes needed only fragments--a muddy shoe, cigarette ash on a sleeve--to make his deductions, but all Christopher has are fading recollections of long-ago events, and for him the truth is much harder to grasp. Ishiguro writes in the first person, but from the beginning there are cracks in Christopher's carefully restrained prose, suggestions that his version of the world may not be the most reliable. Faced with such a narrator, the reader is forced to become a detective too, chasing crumbs of truth through the labyrinth of Christopher's memory.
Ishiguro has never been one for verbal pyrotechnics, but the unruffled surface of this haunting novel only adds to its emotional power. When We Were Orphans is an extraordinary feat of sustained, perfectly controlled imagination, and in Christopher Banks the author has created one of his most memorable characters. --Simon Leake [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Das Buch Ruth'
Willkommen im Reich der postmodernen Narrativität ( Narri! Narro!). Nun gut, Scherz beiseite, wer Ishiguro kennt, wird, auch wenn es sich wie hier um eine Kriminalgeschichte handelt, ohnehin keinen Schlaf raubenden Reißer erwarten. Kunst darf (muss?) schließlich auch ein wenig anstrengen.
Was uns erwartet: Christopher Banks, der Protagonist des Romans, ist, nach erfolgreichem Universitätsbesuch, zum berühmtesten Londoner Detektiv der 30er Jahre geworden. Er ist ein Philosoph, ein Metaphysiker des Detektivischen. Doch was treibt ihn ins Investigative? Wir erfahren es mittels ausführlicher Rückblenden. Banks verbringt Kindheit und Jugend in Shanghai und muss erleben, dass eines Tages seine Eltern verschwunden sind. Er ist besessen davon, das Geheimnis dieses Verschwindens zu ergründen. Nach und nach wird jedoch deutlich, dass diese scheinbar präzisen Erinnerungen in den zahllosen Rückblenden nicht so sehr der Aufhellung der Vergangenheit, als der Konstruktion eines Idealbildes seiner Kindheit dienen. Wir hören, dezent, dezent, die postmoderne Nachtigall trapsen: Nicht die Geschichte als solche ist besonders wichtig, sondern die Beschreibung des postmodernen Ego im Prozess seiner Selbstfindung, seines Bemühens, Ordnung ins allgegenwärtige Chaos zu bringen.
In gewissem Sinne steht dieser Roman in einer Tradition des Kafkaesken ( nicht Kafkas!!): der Beschreibung des Unwirklichen und Unlogischen im vorgeblich Sinnhaften.
Lesbar und wider Erwarten unterhaltsam wird dieses Buch durch Ishiguros parodistisches Talent, auch wenn die manchmal unambitionierte bis fantasielose Übersetzung dem hohen literarischen Rang dieses Autors nicht immer gerecht wird. Trost und Versprechen zum Schluss: Das Mysterium des elterlichen Verschwindens wird tatsächlich enträtselt. --Dietrich Clausen [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Damals in Nagasaki'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Quand Nous Etions Orphelins'
383pages. 17x10,8x2,4cm. Poche. Christopher Banks, Anglais né à Shanghai à l'aube du XXe siècle, est devenu orphelin à 9 ans, à la suite de la disparition énigmatique de ses parents. Envoyé en Grande-Bretagne pour y poursuivre ses études, il devient un détective célèbre, résolvant les affaires les plus difficiles, avant de décider finalement de revenir sur les lieux de son enfance pour s'attaquer à l'énigme qui n'a cessé de le hanter : pourquoi ses parents ont-ils été enlevés ? Cet événement lourd de conséquences serait-il lié au trafic d'opium ? Mais est-il possible de cerner la vérité à partir de souvenirs évanescents, qui plus est dans une ville quotidiennement défigurée par les ravages de la guerre sino-japonaise ? Et peut-on faire confiance à un homme certes rigoureux, mais forcément impliqué émotionnellement dans son enquête ? Le lecteur est alors amené à endosser lui aussi l'habit de détective, en quête des bribes de vérité que livre la conscience labyrinthique du personnage. L'auteur virtuose des Vestiges du Jour explore ainsi à nouveau le territoire du dédale de la mémoire. Avec originalité et subtilité, perspicacité et finesse d'humour, il nous livre un roman remarquable, riche en émotions et en rebondissements. Le lecteur se laisse emporter avec plaisir par le souffle de cette ?uvre à l'atmosphère désenchantée, et qui invite à profiter des plaisirs minuscules de la vie. Un très bon cru, à consommer sans modération. -Nathalie Gouiffès [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Quando Eravamo Orfani'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nunca Me Abandones'
Hailsham aparenta ser un agradable internado inglés, lejos de las influencias de la gran ciudad. La escuela se ocupa bien de sus estudiantes, enseñándoles arte y literatura y todo lo necesario para que se conviertan en el tipo de persona que la sociedad espera. Pero, curiosamente, en Hailsham no se enseña nada sobre el mundo exterior, un mundo con el que casi todo contacto está prohibido. Dentro de Hailsham, Kathy y sus amigos Ruth y Tommy crecen indiferentes ante el resto del mundo, pero será solamente cuando finalmente dejen la seguridad de la escuela que se darán cuenta de lo que Hailsham en realidad esconde.
Nunca me abandones rompe con los limites de la novela literaria. Es un misterio conmovedor, una hermosa historia de amor, una crítica mordaz de la arrogancia humana y también una investigación moral de cómo tratamos a la gente más vulnerable en nuestra sociedad. En su exploración del tema de la memoria y el impacto del pasado en un posible futuro, Ishiguro ha creado su libro más conmovedor hasta la fecha.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]
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