Ryder, a renowned pianist, arrives in a Central European city he cannot identify for a concert he cannot remember agreeing to give. But then as he traverses a landscape by turns eerie and comical - and always strangely malleable, as a dream might be - he comes steadily to realise he is facing the most crucial performance of his life. Ishiguro's extraordinary study of a man whose life has accelerated beyond his control was met on publication by consternation, vilification - and the highest praise.
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Book Description
A haunting and utterly original novel in which a famous pianist confronts unresolved emotional aspects of his life.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
About the Author
Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and came to Britain at the age of five. He is the author of six novels: A Pale View of Hills (1982, Winifred Holtby Prize), An Artist of the Floating World (1986, Whitbread Book of the Year Award, Premio Scanno, shortlisted for the Booker Prize), The Remains of the Day (1989, winner of the Booker Prize), The Unconsoled (1995, winner of the Cheltenham Prize), When We Were Orphans (2000, shortlisted for the Booker Prize) and Never Let Me Go (2005, Corine Internationaler Buchpreis, Serono Literary Prize, Casino de Santiago European Novel Award, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize). Nocturnes (2009) was awarded the Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa International Literary Prize. Kazuo Ishiguro's work has been translated into over forty languages. The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go have also been adapted into major films. In 1995 Ishiguro received an OBE for Services to Literature, and in 1998 the French decoration of Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
An epic, stumbling, vague, directionless ramble of an novel which illustrates better than ever Ishiguro's mastery of the frailty of human character. Confusing and disturbing it undeniably is; but ultimately it is very, very rewarding. Genius.
63 of 65 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Number 9...number 9...number 9...A surreal labyrinth of a novel, car journeys that take hours and then you return to where you began simply by walking through a door...strangers who you suddenly realise you have known for years...and no sleep, never the chance to sleep...This book will haunt your dreams and make you wander about with a vacant expression muttering under your breath and cause you distress and unease but if you're anything like me you won't be able to leave it alone and when you've finished you'll want to read it again. Like all of Ishiguro's work it contains incomparable insights into the complexities and sadness of human nature. The characters ramble on and on explaining in a pedantic way every fine detail of the subjects that prey on their minds day and night but it is endlessly fascinating and Ishiguro is such a kind writer, you feel nothing but tenderness towards this large cast of lonely and obsessed people.
26 of 27 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This brilliant masterpiece is an utterly unique novel - unlike anything I have read among books written in the past fifty years. The story - of a concert pianist arriving in Central Europe only to find himself constantly walking into various unresolved emotional aspects of his life - brings us into contact with great seriousness and sadness, wonderful farce and is unremittingly strange and bizarre. Ishiguro writes brilliantly, and conveys the alienation and dissociation from the world brilliantly in his prose and his unique dialogue.
Oh, and the scene with the broom cupboard is one of the funnisest things I've read in years.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Deadly dull
I gave up after the turgid opening chapters. Deadly dull, uninteresting people, rambling about the minutiae of their tediously boring lives. Read more
Published 1 day ago by Patricia Cleary
4.0 out of 5 stars
Accurate title
Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Unconsoled presents the reader with a thoroughly strange experience. Initial impressions might suggest something merely conventional. Read more
Published 27 days ago by Philip Spires
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Intriguing Journey
About 100 pages into the Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, I almost abandoned reading this elaborate and experimental novel. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Herman Norford
5.0 out of 5 stars
A world-class pianist copes with impossible expectations
There are some dead-on reviews of THE UNCONSOLED on Amazon.com. These point out that Ishiguro has "written a book with the tone and [strange] action of a dream" that nonetheless... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Ethan Cooper
1.0 out of 5 stars
Dear Mr Ishiguro
If you read this, could you please redeem me the hard earned cash that I wasted on this book. I loved 'Never let me go', and also 'Remains of the day' but this book was pure self... Read more
Published 5 months ago by L. R. Pedersen
5.0 out of 5 stars
'THE UNCONSOLED' by Kazuo Ishiguro
The hero of Ishiguro's novel, Mr Ryder, is a man who has definitively "lost the plot", along with his senses of identity, time and place.... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Helen
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ishiguro's Masterly Living Nightmare
This 1995 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, his fourth, is (or was, at the time) very much a stylistic revelation for this outstanding author. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Keith M
4.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful urban landscape
I found this novel to be both an easy read and very compelling. As others have noted, this is quite unlike Mr Ishiguro's other work. Read more
Published 8 months ago by K. K. Jakubczyk
5.0 out of 5 stars
Life changing novel
Ignore the naysayers. This is one of the greatest books ever written. Avoid it if you get annoyed by non-formulaic structures, meandering narratives and ambiguity (as many people... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Sporthat
4.0 out of 5 stars
Luxurious characters
Ishiguro creates deep characters, using pages and pages to explore their lives as the story unwinds. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Ben Reid
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