When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro

When We Were Orphans

By Kazuo Ishiguro

  • Release Date: 2000-09-12
  • Genre: Fiction & Literature
Score: 4
4
From 113 Ratings

Description

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes this stunning work of soaring imagination.
 
Born in early twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition—and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him.

Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one’s past.

Reviews

  • When We Were Orphans

    1
    By Scott_Householder
    The first half of this book is amazing; deftly crafted. With this reader continually wondering whether the protagonist's view of himself coincides with other's view of him and looking forward to unraveling the truth of who he is. Unfortunately, wondering about this young man's psyche is nothing but a dead end. The author stops delving into psychological realms, and begins some sort of unnecessary action scene after the protagonist abandons an individual with no explanation to her, and seemingly no regard for her feelings. The book careens downhill from there; it makes no sense. He takes off looking for a house in the midst of war between the Japanese invaders and Chinese inhabitants. He fantastically believes his parents have lived there in captivity for upwards of 20 years after being kidnapped. I was disappointed after reading half of a book with so much promise, that then fell off a cliff.

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