A new Kazuo Ishiguro novel hasn’t been seen on the book shelves since 2005’s Never Let Me Go, which went on to be made into the 2010 movie of the same name, as well as picking up a Booker Prize shortlist nomination along the way. This, combined with the fact that the British author won the Booker Prize in 1989 for Remains Of The Day, is why there’s so much excitement about the prospect of his new latest work, The Buried Giant.
Scheduled for worldwide release in hardback, audio CD and eBook on the 3rd March 2015 through Faber & Faber Fiction, it’s probably already a good shout for inclusion into either the Booker Prize longlist or shortlist. Although, in all fairness, it could also be an early bookies favourite to take the winner’s spot considering the success of the author in previous years and the fact that twelve of the Booker Prize winners since it began in 1969 have been historical novels.
The story synopsis is initially as cryptically odd as they come, sounding as much like the start of a fantasy fiction novel as the title seems to be. It begins with a single line delivered by a wife named Beatrice to her husband Axl, referring to a journey they must both go on to find their long lost son.
However, the reality is that it’s more an allusion to the link there is between fantasy fiction and the life and times of medieval Britain, where the long journey takes place, set against a backdrop of muddy towns, brutal soldiers and the power struggles of its rulers. The couple must embark on a seemingly impossible quest together to cross the foggy, damp and rain soaked isle on roads left to rack and ruin in post-Roman Britain to find a son they haven’t seen in years.
With miles of desolated, uncultivated land to get through, craggy hills and bleak moorland to to make it over and the broken and overgrown Roman roads as easy as travel comes in fifth century Britain, it’s clearly going to be a bleak march into the wilderness for Beatrice and Axl.
For more info on The Buried Giant ahead of it’s hardback release next March, Kazuo Ishiguro has set up a Twitter account you can follow called @theburiedgiant. He’s already posted a video teaser for his seventh novel.
While the book is his first new novel in ten years, it’s not necessarily been quite so long since his last fiction release, as his short fiction stories collection, Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, was released in 2009. However, it didn’t pick up quite as much positive praise from book critics as his other work, so it’ll be interesting to see how things go with his return to the novel form.
