Winner of the 1986 Whitbread Book of the Year and shortlisted for the 1986 Booker Prize, Kazuo Ishiguro’s – An Artist of the Floating World (1986) celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2016 having been published to great acclaim both then and now.
Included in the Observer’s 2015 list of the 100 best novels in English, (no.94 on the list), Ishiguro’s 2nd novel concentrates on a Japan pre and post war along with the impact of change to Japan and its people subsequent to the latter period of history.
The narrator – Masuji Ono – is a retired artist, bearing the secret of a past which is always bubbling beneath the surface waiting to explode at any time.
When it comes to writing about Japan and its people, Ishiguro is a master of such, himself having been born in Nagasaki. He is also adept at delicately portraying the, at times, very complicated relationships between young and old, teacher and student along with father and children as each group attempt to find their place within an ever changing world after the war.
The influence of the Western World as demonstrated through the grandson’s (Ichiro) love of cowboys and Pop-eye (American and European respectively) runs throughout the narrative, as does the struggle to negate for the past in the face of an ever changing present and future.
As such, An Artist of the Floating World, is a grand work well worthy of the acclaim to which its ascribed and clearly marks out Ishiguro as one of the finest writers in the English language.
(C) Copyright 2017, Darell J Philip