Deconstructing The Classical English Detective Detective Work In Kazuo Ishiguro S When We Were Orphans

Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Frankfurt (Main) (Institut für Englisch- und Amerikastudien), course: Transcultural Crime Writing, language: English, abstract: This paper describes Kazui Ishiguro's Detective Christopher Banks and compares him to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Crime fiction is one of the most successful, extensive and international genres of the late twentieth and the early twenty-first century. Detective fiction is very versatile, consisting of the whodunit, thriller, private eye and hard-boiled, just to name a few subgenres. In a detective story, the reader expects a crime as well as doubt about motive, means and perpetrator, provided with a fair trail of clues to investigate and solve the crime. Nineteenth-century detective fiction shed a light on the British Empire in a destabilising whilst at the same time reassuring way for national readers. England’s aggressive authority and force were considered a frequent method of maintaining social control and were therefore often addressed by late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century writers. Detective stories were able to turn such obsolete aggression into a more contemporary, benign authority by offering detection as a possibility to avoid despotic representations of government authority. Modern British detective fiction tends to include transcultural perspectives. Today, writers use a variety of topics, sometimes even combined with ancient myths or tales in order to attract more readers at home and abroad. The British author Elly Griffiths, for example, set the plot of her novel Smoke and Mirrors in Brighton in 1951, where the bodies of two missing children, dubbed by the newspapers as ‘Hansel and Gretel’, were found, giving the story a fairy-tale touch. The Nobel Prize winning writer Kazuo Ishiguro also went back in time for his novel "When We Were Orphans". The author might not be the first coming to mind when thinking about detective fiction. In his novels, Ishiguro explores the topic of cultural identity. The novel is full of allusions to Sherlock Holmes. Small details and objects remind the reader of the iconic investigator and even characters in the book compare Holmes and Banks, who is impressed by Doyle’s mysteries. As Barry Lewis claims, Ishiguro’s protagonist may be investigating his past life “with Holmes-like meticulousness”. Nevertheless, When We Were Orphans does not describe a detective as depicted in Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes Stories. In Ishiguro’s novel, the structure of the story, the detective’s associates and the detective’s character are presented differently and not in a Holmesian way.

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes this stunning work of soaring imagination. Born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own, painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition-and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him. Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one’s past.

Sent to live in England after the disappearance of his parents, Christopher Banks returns to Shanghai, the city of his birth, more than twenty years later to uncover the truth about the tragedy that transformed his childhood.

A masterful novel from one of the most admired writers of our time. Christopher Banks, an English boy born in early-20th-century Shanghai, is orphaned at age nine when both his mother and father disappear under suspicious circumstances. He grows up to become a renowned detective, and more than 20 years later, returns to Shanghai to solve the mystery of the disappearances. Within the layers of the narrative told in Christopher's precise, slightly detached voice are revealed what he can't, or wont, see: that the simplest desires—a child's for his parents, a man's for understanding—may give rise to the most complicated truths. A feat of narrative skill and soaring imagination, When We Were Orphans is Kazuo Ishiguro at his brilliant best. Performed by John Lee

Drawing from two political and several literary homelands, this collection presents a remarkable series of trenchant essays, demonstrating the full range and force of Salman Rushdie's remarkable imaginative and observational powers. With candour, eloquence and indignation he carefully examines an expanse of topics; including the politics of India and Pakistan, censorship, the Labour Party, Palestinian identity, contemporary film and late-twentieth century race, religion and politics. Elsewhere he trains his eye on literature and fellow writers, from Julian Barnes on love to the politics of George Orwell's 'Inside the Whale', providing fresh insight on Kipling, V.S. Naipaul, Graham Greene, John le Carré, Raymond Carver, Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon among others. Profound, passionate and insightful, Imaginary Homelands is a masterful collection from one of the greatest writers working today.

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 3,0, University of Würzburg (englische Literaturwissenschaft), language: English, abstract: Japanese-British writer Kazuo Ishiguro is not very fond of critics concentrating on Japanese elements in his works , however, his first short stories and the following two novels take place – even if, as it is the case with A Pale View of Hills, only partly– in Japan, making it hard not to concentrate on the writer ́s apparent preoccupation with his Japanese heritage. His third novel, featuring an English setting and characters – an old mansion, a butler, and his employer, may have been viewed as an attempt to break away from this line of interpretation on the one hand, on the other, however, it was the one work which first merited a mention of the similarities between the butler ́s philosophy of life and the samurai code of honour. To the author, though, his three novels, namely A Pale View of Hills, An Artist of the Floating World, and The Remains of the Day, are linked primarily by their characters, who all seem to be stuck in similar situations, having to face their past – in all three cases the past ultimately revolves around their choices before, during and in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War – and consequently struggle with their long-repressed feelings of regret and even shame... Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. Samurai Ethics in the Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro 2.1. Samurai Ethics – An Overview 2.2. The Position of Woman – Ishiguro’s Female Characters 2.3. Suicide 2.4. The Duty of Loyalty 2.4.1. Filial Piety 2.4.2. Teacher-Student relationship 2.4.3. Loyalty to the Master 2.4.4. Serving a Higher Purpose 2.5. Self-Control 2.6. Ishiguro’s Imaginary Homeland(s) 3. Conclusion 4. Bibliography

The extraordinary new novel from the author of Never Let Me Go and the Booker Prize­–winning The Remains of the Day The Romans have long since departed, and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. But at least the wars that once ravaged the country have ceased. The Buried Giant begins as a couple, Axl and Beatrice, set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen for years. They expect to face many hazards—some strange and other-worldly—but they cannot yet foresee how their journey will reveal to them dark and forgotten corners of their love for one another. Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel in a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge and war.

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day Here is the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. In a novel where past and present confuse, she relives scenes of Japan's devastation in the wake of World War II.