The Unconsoled [Paperback]

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novelThe Remains of the Day, here is a novel that is at once a gripping psychological mystery, a wicked satire of the cult of art, and a poignant character study of a man whose public life has accelerated beyond his control.

The setting is a nameless Central European city where Ryder, a renowned pianist, has come to give the most important performance of his life. Instead, he finds himself diverted on a series of cryptic and infuriating errands that nevertheless provide him with vital clues to his own past. InThe UnconsoledIshiguro creates a work that is itself a virtuoso performance, strange, haunting, and resonant with humanity and wit. A work of great interest and originality.... Ishiguro has mapped out an aesthetic territory that is all his own...frankly fantastic [and] fiercer and funnier than before. —The New YorkerKazuo Ishiguro is the 2017 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. His work has been translated into more than 40 languages. Both The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go have sold more than 1 million copies, and both were adapted into highly acclaimed films. Ishiguro's other work includes The Buried Giant, Nocturnes, A Pale View of the Hills, and An Artist of the Floating World.The questions, discussion topics, author biography, and  bibliography that follow are meant to enhance your group's reading of Kazuo Ishiguro'sThe Unconsoled. We hope that they will provide you with new ways of looking at- and talking about- this mysterious and infinitely provocative new novel from the Booker Prize-winning author ofThe Remains of the Day.

1. One of the first things we learn about this novel's protagonist is that he is at least partly amnesiac. What role does Ryder's amnesia play inThe Unconsoled? How dlS