English author Kazuo Ishiguro has been named winner of the 2017 Nobel prize for literature.
The Swedish Academy praised Ishiguro for his “novels of great emotional force”, which it said had “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world,” as per a report on the Guardian UK.
With names including Margaret Atwood, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and Haruki Murakami leading the odds at the bookmakers, Ishiguro was a surprise choice.
But his blue-chip literary credentials return the award to more familiar territory after last year’s controversial choice of the singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.
The author of novels including The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro’s writing, said the Academy, is “marked by a carefully restrained mode of expression, independent of whatever events are taking place”.
Awarded since 1901, the 9m Swedish krona (£832,000) Nobel prize for literature is for the writing of an author who, in the words of Alfred Nobel’s bequest, “shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”.
Ishiguro becomes the 114th winner, following in the footsteps of names including Seamus Heaney, Toni Morrison, Mo Yan and Pablo Neruda.