My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs: The Nobel Lecture

This small volume is a jewel. Those readers who have delighted in Ishiguro’s masterful writing will find a more personal side of this writer. It is his Nobel lecture after receiving that prize in 2017. Anyone interested in learning more about a writer’s beginnings, or this writer’s process in particular, will be delighted with this book. Such is his craft that we are immediately in the small garret where his writing began. Without saying a lot about our expectations of those who look like they are foreign, his few sentences reveal cultural norms designed to entrap free spirits into outsider status. Much like the butler in The Remains of the Day, many of us are entrapped by social and cultural mores that leave us living our lives in servitude.

Isiguro talks about seemingly mundane occurrences that can shift a writer’s consciousness, such as watching a funny old movie and gaining perspective on the relationships that build the culture. This book is wonderful, inspiring, and insightful.