It’s the third and final installment in our mini-series where we revisit Booker Prize novels whose cinematic adaptations were nominated at the Academy Awards. In this episode, we’re taking a closer look at The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, which won the 1989 Booker Prize. Ishiguro’s moving portrait of the perfect English butler looking back on his life was adapted for the screen four years later by James Ivory – the film received eight nominations at the Oscars. Tune in to hear Jo and James discuss the novel – which also happens to be our March Monthly Spotlight – and its big-screen counterpart.

In this episode Jo and James:
Share a brief biography of Kazuo Ishiguro
Summarise the plot of the book, and share their thoughts on it
Explore the character of Stevens and the idea of dignity on which he based his life
Discuss the narrative devices Ishiguro uses throughout the novel
Delve into James Ivory’s adaptation, and the differences between book and film

Reading list:
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booke...
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro: https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booke...

A full transcript of the episode is available at our website.

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The Booker Prize is the leading literary award in the English speaking world, and has brought recognition, reward and readership to outstanding fiction for over five decades. Each year, the prize is awarded to what is, in the opinion of the judges, the best novel of the year written in English and published in the UK and Ireland.

Previous winners include The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, The Promise by Damon Galgut, Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, The Bone People by Keri Hulme and many more.

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