Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki in 1954, though has lived in Britain since he was five years old. He's a graduate of the University of Kent and the University of East Anglia and has been awarded both the Whitbread Prize, the Booker Prize, an OBE and the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2017, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature "The Buried Giant" is his seventh novel, and was first published in 2015.

“The Buried Giant” is set in post-Arthurian Britain. The Romans have gone, their roads and villas crumbling and Arthur himself is an honoured memory – amongst the Britons at least. Britons and Saxons live largely separately, but in an uneasy peace. Ogres and dragons are amongst the dangers travellers may meet on the road, but the rarely-lifting mist that covers the land seems to be a bigger problem. (When it’s referred to as a mist of forgetfulness, it’s a literal description rather than a metaphorical one. People seem to have trouble remembering the recent past, let alone what happened long ago).

The story follows Axl and Beatrice, elderly Britons who have been married for many years. As the book opens, the pair are living on the edge of their village – well, more a warren carved out of a hill. They decide, early in the book, to visit their son who lives in a neighbouring village. Thanks to the mist, though, they’re not sure where his village is located. There are further complications – the couple aren’t sure why they haven’t seen their son in so long, but they convince themselves their son will be happy to see them. Axl even struggles to remember what his son looks like – he only has vague memories of a boy - and there’s no mention of a name.

On their journey, Axl and Beatrice meet a few other people. These include a boatman, sheltering in a ruined Roman villa – whose job, it appears, is to ferry people across to an island of the dead. Generally, he’ll only take one person at a time; each person will live on the isle in solitude, never meeting any of the other inhabitants. Married couples will only be able to travel together if they can prove their love to the boatman. The meeting has a lasting impact on Beatrice. She becomes desperate that she and Axl recover their memories, in case they ever need to convince the boatman of their love. Axl is a little more concerned that recovering their lost memories might damage the love they currently share. They share part of their journey with a pair of Saxons - Wistan, a warrior, and Edwin, a boy he has taken under his wing. They also meet Sir Gawain, King Arthur’s nephew and one of his better known knights. Now an old man, Gawain still pursues the mission that Arthur sent him on.

On the surface, “The Buried Giant” isn’t what you’d expect from Ishiguro – ogres, dragons, a Knight of the Round Table and a ferryman who, despite working in England, bears a striking resemblance to Charon. It has received some poor reviews, though I suspect the setting may have put people off more than what was actually happening. At its heart, the book sees Ishiguro dealing with the familiar themes of memory and loss. A very touching, memorable book.

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