Contemporary Literary Criticism | Ishiguro, Kazuo (Vol. 110) - Gabriele Annan (review date 7 December 1989)

Gabriele Annan (review date 7 December 1989)

SOURCE: Gabriele Annan, "On the High Wire," in New York Review of Books, December 7, 1989, pp. 3-4.

[In the review below, Annan argues that in Ishiguro's first three novels he has brilliantly portrayed characters who are unable to see their own faults, evoking condemnation and pity.]

Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Japan thirty-five years ago. He came to England when he was six, and has lived there ever since. This is a stranger experience than being Japanese in the United States, where the landscape is dotted with second and third generation Japanese. Even twenty years ago, few Japanese lived in England, and a Japanese child, except in a group of tourists, was a rare sight indeed.

Ishiguro writes in English. His English is perfect, and not just in the obvious sense it is accurate, unhurried, fastidious, and noiseless. A hush seems to lie over it, compounded of mystery and discretion. The...

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