Kazuo Ishiguro just won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The British writer, known best for his novels The Buried Giant, Never Let Me Go, and The Remains of the Day, was announced as this year’s winner by the Swedish academy earlier today (Oct. 5).
“He has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of the world,” the Swedish academy said. “If you mix Jane Austen and Kafka you have Kazuo Ishiguro’s work.
“But you have to add a little bit of Marcel Proust into the mix, and then you stir, but not too much. He’s a writer of great integrity. He doesn’t look to the side, he’s developed an aesthetic universe all his own.”
Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan and moved to the UK when he was five years old. He has already received four Man Booker Prize nominations and won the award in 1989 for his novel The Remains of the Day.
Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood was the last minute hot favorite to win the Literature Nobel this year. She won the Man Booker Prize in 2000 for The Blind Assassin and the adaptation of her novel The Handmaid’s Tale has been a raging success for Hulu this year.
Meanwhile South Korean poet Ko Un and consistent Nobel favorite Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was also speculated on.
Last year, the prize was controversially awarded to singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan, “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” The choice was divisive, with many disputing his credentials as a poet. Dylan initially refused to comment on the award, and only accepted the prize after a lengthy delay.
The Literature award is the fourth of this month’s Nobel Prizes to be announced, following Jeffrey Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael Young’s victory in physiology and medicine, Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish, and Kip Thorne’s triumph in physics, and Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson’s win for their work in chemistry.