And the Winner Is....Kazuo Ishiguro!

Just announced as the winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature is Kazuo Ishiguro, the British writer of such novels as "The Remains of the Day" (which was made into a critically acclaimed movie starring Anthony Hopkins) and "Never Let Me Go," as well as five other novels. The Swedish Academy describes his novels as "uncover[ing] the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world." One official of the Academy, Sara Danius, says that Ishiguro is "a writer of great integrity," and intriguingly describes him as a mixture of Jane Austen, Franz Kafka, and Marcel Proust. The New York Times lists his themes as "the fallibility of memory, mortality and the porous nature of time." Adjectives commonly used about his work include "restrained," "reserved," and "fastidious." The choice of Ishiguro was a bit of a surprise (other writers who had been considered more likely to win included Margaret Atwood, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Haruki Murakami, and Salman Rushdie) but a welcome one by most commentators. Some are particularly glad to see a return to a more traditionally literary author, after last year's contentious choice of Bob Dylan. Interestingly, Ishiguro, a sometime songwriter, has been quoted as saying his hero is Bob Dylan!