The Buried Giant - (Vintage International) by Kazuo Ishiguro (Paperback)

About the Book

In post-Arthurian Britain, the wars that once raged between the Saxons and the Britons have finally ceased. Axl and Beatrice, and elderly British couple, set off to visit their son, whom they haven't seen in years. And because a strange mist has caused mass amnesia throughout the land, they can scarcely remember anything about him. As they are joined on their journey by a Saxon warrior, his orphan charge, and an illustrious knight, Axl and Beatrice slowly begin to remember the dark and troubled past they all share.

Book Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize-winning novel The Remains of the Day comes a luminous meditation on the act of forgetting and the power of memory.

In post-Arthurian Britain, the wars that once raged between the Saxons and the Britons have finally ceased. Axl and Beatrice, an elderly British couple, set off to visit their son, whom they haven't seen in years. And, because a strange mist has caused mass amnesia throughout the land, they can scarcely remember anything about him. As they are joined on their journey by a Saxon warrior, his orphan charge, and an illustrious knight, Axl and Beatrice slowly begin to remember the dark and troubled past they all share.

By turns savage, suspenseful, and intensely moving, The Buried Giant is a luminous meditation on the act of forgetting and the power of memory.

Review Quotes

"Spectacular. . . . The Buried Giant has the clear ring of legend, as graceful, original and humane as anything Ishiguro has written."--The Washington Post

"An exceptional novel. . . . The Buried Giant does what important books do: It remains in the mind long after it has been read, refusing to leave."--The New York Times Book Review

"Lush and thrilling, rolling the gothic, fantastical, political, and philosophical into one."--The New Republic

"Mesmerizing. . . . A provocative, multilayered mosaic. . . . Lifetimes of myth, allegory, and epic discoveries are contained within."--The Christian Science Monitor

"A literary tour de force so unassuming that you don't realize until the last page that you're reading a masterpiece."--USA Today

"Splendid. . . . Excellent. . . . The Buried Giant is a simple and powerful tale of love, aging and loss."--The Wall Street Journal

"Ishiguro is a master of the uncanny. . . . Few write about the mysteries of the human experience with such grace as Ishiguro, and his prodigious gifts are evident throughout the novel."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Devastating . . . As emotionally ruinous an ending as any I've read in a very long time, and it made me circle back to the opening pages, to re-enter the strange mist of this sad and remarkable book."--Mark O'Connell, Slate

"A profound meditation on trauma, memory, and the collective lies nations and groups create to expiate their guilt."--The Boston Globe

"If forced at knife-point to choose my favorite Ishiguro novel, I'd opt for The Buried Giant. It uses the tropes of fantasy to set up a smoke-screen which the book then, by twists and turns, dispels. This reveal gives the book a shadow-plot, and layers of mystery . . . An ideas-enabler, a metaphor-animator."--David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks

"Ishiguro is a deft gut-renovator of genres, bringing fresh life and feeling to hollowed-out conventions. . . . The love story at its center shimmers with a mythic and melancholy grace."--Vulture

"A beautiful, heartbreaking book about the duty to remember and the urge to forget."--The Guardian

"Powerful and disturbing. . . . Provokes strong emotions--and lingers long in the mind."--The Economist

"A beautiful fable with a hard message at its core. . . . There won't, I suspect, be a more important work of fiction published this year than The Buried Giant."--John Sutherland, The Times (London)

"A novel of imaginative daring that, in its subtleties of tone, mood and reflection, could be the work of no other writer. . . . In the manner of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Ishiguro has created a fantastical alternate reality in which, in spite of the extremity of its setting and because of its integrity and emotional truth, you believe unhesitatingly."--Financial Times

About the Author

Kazuo Ishiguro is the 2017 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. His work has been translated into more than 40 languages. Both The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go have sold more than 1 million copies, and both were adapted into highly acclaimed films. Ishiguro's other work includes The Buried Giant, Nocturnes, A Pale View of the Hills, and An Artist of the Floating World.