Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World

Paola Trimarco (The Open University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1986

Places

United Kingdom (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

A short novel broadly categorised as historical fiction, An Artist of the Floating World is one of Kazuo Ishiguro’s most studied and discussed works. Like his first novel, A Pale View of Hills (1982), this second novel by Ishiguro is set in Japan and draws on the author’s Japanese heritage. Following the publication of An Artist of the Floating World in 1986, Ishiguro became regarded as an “internationalist” writer, alongside Salman Rushdie and Shiva Naipaul, at a time of growing interest in foreign-born writers with a British connection.

The story is narrated by Masuji Ono, an elderly, retired artist in Japan, writing what reads like a memoir over a period of two years, between …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1529 words

Citation: Trimarco, Paola. "An Artist of the Floating World". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 December 2016 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=6688, accessed 26 November 2024.]

Save this article