1 - Ishiguro as an International Writer

Summary

In the mid-1980s, when Ishiguro's writing career was ascending, the British Council 's short leaflets introducing British authors had under a photograph of Ishiguro a quote from him: ‘I consider myself an international writer.’ Over the years, this self-declaration has been reiterated by reviewers and academic critics of his novels, and, while nobody has fully defined what it means exactly to be an ‘international writer ‘, the term is a convenient one that addresses both Ishiguro's obvious Japanese ancestry and the kind of broad themes with universal appeal found in his fiction. Salman Rushdie celebrates the latter aspect of Ishiguro's identity when he notes that Ishiguro employs a ‘brilliant subversion of the fictional modes’ in his discussion of large themes such as ‘death, change, pain, and evil ‘.

In defining the umbrella term ‘international writer ‘ a connection between Rushdie and Ishiguro is not an arbitrary one. In 1981 Rushdie was awarded the Booker Prize for Midnight's Children, an inventive and sprawling novel about India's independence from Great Britain. Although Ishiguro observes that there are very significant differences between his and Rushdie's works, he credits this moment in Rushdie's career as crucial for his own developing one:

[Rushdie] had previously been a completely unknown writer. That was a really symbolic moment and then everyone was suddenly looking for other Rushdies. It so happened that around this time I brought out A Pale View of Hills. Usually first novels disappear, as you know, without a trace. Yet I received a lot of attention, got lots of coverage, and did a lot of interviews. I know why this was. It was because I had this Japanese face and this Japanese name and it was what was being covered at the time. (V&H 134–5)

Eight years later, in 1989, Ishiguro himself won the Booker for The Remains of the Day, and he observed that, while the kind of early attention bestowed on him followed from readers’ perception of him as an exotic writer (along the lines of their perceptions of writers like Rushdie as well), he believed that he subsequently fought against the very labels that earned him such positive publicity.