Remains of the Day - Softcover

Ishiguro, Kazuo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571154913 ISBN 13: 9780571154913

Publisher: Alfred A.Knopf, 1999

Synopsis

An elderly butler is on a five-day motoring trip through the West Country in the 1950s. The climax of his journey is to be a reunion with his former housekeeper. This 1989 Booker Prize-winner attempts to capture a period in British history and draw a portrait of a man in old age.

About this title

Review:

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.

From the Inside Flap:

A tragic, spiritual portrait of a perfect English butler and his reaction to his fading insular world in post-war England. A wonderful, wonderful book.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred A.Knopf
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0571154913
• ISBN 13: 9780571154913
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256