

The Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel by 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, Kazuo Ishiguro
From A to Z, the Penguin Drop Caps series collects 26 unique hardcovers—featuring cover art by Jessica Hische
It all begins with a letter. Fall in love with Penguin Drop Caps, a new series of twenty-six collectible and hardcover editions, each with a type cover showcasing a gorgeously illustrated letter of the alphabet. In a design collaboration between Jessica Hische and Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, the series features unique cover art by Hische, a superstar in the world of type design and illustration, whose work has appeared everywhere from Tiffany & Co. to Wes Anderson’s recent film Moonrise Kingdom to Penguin’s own bestsellers Committed and Rules of Civility. With exclusive designs that have never before appeared on Hische’s hugely popular Daily Drop Cap blog, the Penguin Drop Caps series launches with six perennial favorites to give as elegant gifts, or to showcase on your own shelves.
I is for Ishiguro. Masuji Ono saw misery in his homeland and became unwilling to spend his skills solely in the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he envisioned a strong and powerful nation of the future, and he put his painting to work in the service of the movement that led Japan into World War II. Now, as the mature Masuji Ono struggles through the spiritual wreckage of that war, his memories of the “floating world” of his youth, full of pleasure and promise, serve as an escape from, a punishment for—and a justification of—his entire life. Drifting without honor in Japan’s postwar society, which indicts him for its defeat and reviles him for his aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being. An Artist of the Floating World is a sensual and profoundly convincing portrait of the artist as an aging man. At once a multigenerational tale and a samurai death poem written in English, it is also a saga of the clash of the old and new orders, blending classical and contemporary iconography with compassion and wit.
The Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel by 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, Kazuo Ishiguro
From A to Z, the Penguin Drop Caps series collects 26 unique hardcovers—featuring cover art by Jessica Hische
It all begins with a letter. Fall in love with Penguin Drop Caps, a new series of twenty-six collectible and hardcover editions, each with a type cover showcasing a gorgeously illustrated letter of the alphabet. In a design collaboration between Jessica Hische and Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley, the series features unique cover art by Hische, a superstar in the world of type design and illustration, whose work has appeared everywhere from Tiffany & Co. to Wes Anderson’s recent film Moonrise Kingdom to Penguin’s own bestsellers Committed and Rules of Civility. With exclusive designs that have never before appeared on Hische’s hugely popular Daily Drop Cap blog, the Penguin Drop Caps series launches with six perennial favorites to give as elegant gifts, or to showcase on your own shelves.
I is for Ishiguro. Masuji Ono saw misery in his homeland and became unwilling to spend his skills solely in the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he envisioned a strong and powerful nation of the future, and he put his painting to work in the service of the movement that led Japan into World War II. Now, as the mature Masuji Ono struggles through the spiritual wreckage of that war, his memories of the “floating world” of his youth, full of pleasure and promise, serve as an escape from, a punishment for—and a justification of—his entire life. Drifting without honor in Japan’s postwar society, which indicts him for its defeat and reviles him for his aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being. An Artist of the Floating World is a sensual and profoundly convincing portrait of the artist as an aging man. At once a multigenerational tale and a samurai death poem written in English, it is also a saga of the clash of the old and new orders, blending classical and contemporary iconography with compassion and wit.
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Find An Artist of the Floating World Kazuo Ishiguro in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
Find An Artist of the Floating World Kazuo Ishiguro in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
7 books in catalog
Explorations of memory, self-deception, and the passage of time define one of modern literature's most distinctive bodies of fiction, highlighted by the Booker Prize-winning novel The Remains of the Day. Kazuo Ishiguro, a British novelist of Japanese origin born in Nagasaki in 1954, has written acclaimed works spanning historical fiction, dystopian science fiction, and fantasy.
Ishiguro moved to England with his family in 1960. He completed his Bachelor's degree at the University of Kent in 1978 and earned a Master's degree from the University of East Anglia's creative writing program in 1980. After becoming a British citizen in 1982, he established himself as a full-time author based in London. His debut novel, A Pale View of Hills, won the 1982 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, followed by An Artist of the Floating World, which won the 1986 Whitbread Prize. His third novel, The Remains of the Day, won the 1989 Man Booker Prize and was adapted into an acclaimed film, while The Unconsoled received the 1995 Cheltenham Prize. In 2008, The Times ranked him 32nd on their list of "The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945". In 2017, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded by the Swedish Academy for uncovering "the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".
Writing primarily in the first person, Ishiguro frequently employs unreliable narrators whose understated reflections gradually reveal deeper psychological truths, regret, and personal reckoning. His characters often grapple with historical shifts, societal obligations, and the fragility of human memory, whether situated in post-World War II Japan, interwar Britain, or speculative settings. Books such as Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun incorporate speculative elements like cloning and artificial intelligence to examine empathy, mortality, and what it means to be human.
7 books in catalog
Explorations of memory, self-deception, and the passage of time define one of modern literature's most distinctive bodies of fiction, highlighted by the Booker Prize-winning novel The Remains of the Day. Kazuo Ishiguro, a British novelist of Japanese origin born in Nagasaki in 1954, has written acclaimed works spanning historical fiction, dystopian science fiction, and fantasy.
Ishiguro moved to England with his family in 1960. He completed his Bachelor's degree at the University of Kent in 1978 and earned a Master's degree from the University of East Anglia's creative writing program in 1980. After becoming a British citizen in 1982, he established himself as a full-time author based in London. His debut novel, A Pale View of Hills, won the 1982 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, followed by An Artist of the Floating World, which won the 1986 Whitbread Prize. His third novel, The Remains of the Day, won the 1989 Man Booker Prize and was adapted into an acclaimed film, while The Unconsoled received the 1995 Cheltenham Prize. In 2008, The Times ranked him 32nd on their list of "The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945". In 2017, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded by the Swedish Academy for uncovering "the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".
Writing primarily in the first person, Ishiguro frequently employs unreliable narrators whose understated reflections gradually reveal deeper psychological truths, regret, and personal reckoning. His characters often grapple with historical shifts, societal obligations, and the fragility of human memory, whether situated in post-World War II Japan, interwar Britain, or speculative settings. Books such as Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun incorporate speculative elements like cloning and artificial intelligence to examine empathy, mortality, and what it means to be human.