When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro audiobook

When We Were Orphans

By Kazuo Ishiguro
Read by John Lee

HarperAudio
10.83 Hours • • 1
Format : Digital Download (In Stock)
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    ISBN: 9780060854317

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

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Summary

Summary

A 2000 Man Booker Prize Finalist

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

Editorial Reviews

Editorial Reviews

“His fullest achievement yet.” —New York Times Book Review
“With his characteristic finesse, Mr. Ishiguro infuses what seems like a classic adventure story with an ineffable tinge of strangeness.”  —Wall Street Journal
“Poignant...When We Were Orphans may well be Ishiguro’s most capacious book so far.”  —New York Review of Books
“Ishiguro’s latest novel triumphs with the seductiveness of his prose...Ishiguro shows a new mastery of narrative tension, notably with Christopher’s Kafkaesque experience during the Japanese invasion.” —Publishers Weekly
“You seldom read a novel that so convinces you it is extending the possibilities of fiction.” —Sunday Times (London)
“[A]n imaginative work of surpassing intelligence and taste.”  —Times Literary Supplement (London)
“Ishiguro shows immense tenderness for his characters. [The novel] confirms Ishiguro as one of Britain’s most formally daring...novelists.”  —Guardian (London)
“Swift, compelling, moving, irresistible.” —Baltimore Sun
“A compelling novel...Readers will both enjoy and admire Ishiguro’s subtle work.” —Booklist
“When We Were Orphans is an extraordinary feat of sustained, perfectly controlled imagination, and in Christopher Banks the author has created one of his most memorable characters. ”  —Amazon.com editorial review
“Atmosphere, historical detail, suspense: Ishiguro’s new book has it all...The writing is just wonderful, at once rich and taut. More writers should take style lessons from Ishiguro.” —Library Journal
“An eerie, oddly beautiful tale...Elegiac, meditative, [and] ultimately emotionally devastating.”  —Kirkus Reviews
“John Lee conveys both Banks’ intelligence and his uneasy depths in this fine performance...The reserved, punctiliously grammatical narrator, a first cousin to the butler-narrator of The Remains of the Day, here again offers a dramatic contrast to the backdrop of the times—the Japanese siege of Shanghai in 1937; the growing unrest and uncertainty of a world moving toward war; and the romance, courage, and resolve so identified with that era.”  —AudioFile

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Author

Author Bio: Kazuo Ishiguro

Author Bio: Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro, the author of several acclaimed novels, won the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017. The Remains of the Day won the Booker Prize and was the basis for a major motion picture. The Buried Giant was a New York Times bestseller, A Pale View of Hills won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, and An Artist of the Floating World won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award. The Unconsoled won the Cheltenham Prize and Never Let Me Go won the Corine Internationaler Buchpreis, the Serono Literary Prize, the Casino de Santiago European Novel Award, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 1995 Ishiguro received an OBE for Services to Literature and in 1998 the French decoration of Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of five.

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Details

Details

Available Formats : Digital Download
Runtime: 10.83
Audience: Adult
Language: English

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