The Novel Index

Where to start with Kazuo Ishiguro

British and Japanese novelist, born 1954. Won the Costa Novel Award in 1986 and the Booker Prize in 1989.

Best Kazuo Ishiguro book to start with: Never Let Me Go (2005), on 8 of the 16 lists it could have made.

The Remains of the Day is the best first Ishiguro. It’s narrated by an English butler looking back on his career, in his own formal voice, and it won the Booker Prize. It is short, quiet and easy to read, and it’s the best way in.

Never Let Me Go is the lists’ favourite, and it works better if you know as little as possible beforehand, so read it second and don’t look it up. After that, An Artist of the Floating World is a short book about an ageing painter in post-war Japan, and Klara and the Sun, set in a near future, is narrated by an artificial friend.

When We Were Orphans is a detective story with a strange heart. Save The Unconsoled for last. It is long, deliberately disorienting, and many fans of the others find it hard going, so come to it only when you’re sure you like him.

Kazuo Ishiguro
Photo: Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 4.0

Kazuo Ishiguro's books, ranked best first

Never Let Me Go comes first, on 8 of the 16 lists it could have made, followed by The Remains of the Day and An Artist of the Floating World.

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Kazuo Ishiguro's novels in order

The earliest on our lists is An Artist of the Floating World (1986), and the most recent is Klara and the Sun (2021).

  1. 1986 An Artist of the Floating World
  2. 1989 The Remains of the Day
  3. 1995 The Unconsoled
  4. 2000 When We Were Orphans
  5. 2005 Never Let Me Go
  6. 2021 Klara and the Sun

Novels on at least one of our 30 lists. Not a complete bibliography.

Also on one list

One more of Kazuo Ishiguro's novels is on one of our lists.

Lists used on this page