'A Pale View Of Hills'

Despite what you might assume about his name, Kazuo Ishiguro is not Japanese. He is the son of a Japanese couple, born in Nagasaki in 1954.

He moved to England when he was five, went to school there and became a British citizen in 1982, the same year his first novel, A Pale View of Hills, was published.

Ishiguro would not even visit Japan since he was a child until 1989. Therefore, A Pale View of Hills, one of his few novels set in his native country, is based on completely imagined environs. He didn't really know anything about Japan (outside of what he might have read or remembered as a young child) when he wrote the novel. Knowing this, it makes sense. Ishiguro's novels do not hinge quite so much on setting as others. Ishiguro's novels are based around his complex and, often, disturbed characters.

Many are immature or naive. Others are placed in a set of unwanted circumstances. Most fail to come to grips with the future. That's precisely what we get in A Pale View of Hills, a set of characters unable to handle some part of their lives.