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What is the best Kazuo Ishiguro novel?

By YPB Team

Eight novels across four decades, from quiet postwar Japan to a robot's bedroom vigil. Some won the Booker; one baffled half its first readers.

  1. The Remains of the Day — ranked #11
    The Remains of the Day
    Ishiguro's 1989 Booker Prize winner, told by an English butler looking back on decades of service at Darlington Hall.
    1000pts
  2. The Buried Giant — ranked #22
    The Buried Giant
    A 2015 novel set in post-Arthurian Britain, where an elderly couple crosses a land under a mist that erases memory.
    590pts
  3. A Pale View of Hills — ranked #33
    A Pale View of Hills
    Ishiguro's 1982 debut, about a Japanese widow in England haunted by memories of Nagasaki after the war.
    500pts
  4. Klara and the Sun — ranked #44
    Klara and the Sun
    His 2021 novel narrated by Klara, an Artificial Friend bought to keep a sick teenage girl company.
    389pts
  5. An Artist of the Floating World — ranked #55
    An Artist of the Floating World
    A 1986 novel in which an ageing painter in postwar Japan reckons with his work for the imperial regime.
    389pts
  6. The Unconsoled — ranked #66
    The Unconsoled
    His long 1995 novel following a famous pianist through a dreamlike few days in an unnamed European city.
    389pts
  7. Never Let Me Go — ranked #77
    Never Let Me Go
    A 2005 novel about three friends raised at Hailsham, an English boarding school with a dark purpose.
    0pts
  8. When We Were Orphans — ranked #88
    When We Were Orphans
    A 2000 novel about an English detective who returns to Shanghai to solve the disappearance of his parents.
    0pts
books139fiction41Kazuo Ishiguro1

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