An Artist of the Floating World

by Kazuo Ishiguro

Overview

In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II.

Now, as the mature Ono struggles through the aftermath of that war, his memories of his youth and of the “floating world”—the nocturnal world of pleasure, entertainment, and drink—offer him both escape and redemption, even as they punish him for betraying his early promise. Indicted by society for its defeat and reviled for his past aesthetics, he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but, above all, a human being.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780571283873
Publisher:	Pgw
Publication date:	02/07/2013
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)
Lexile:	1060L (what's this?)

About the Author

Kazuo 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.

Read an Excerpt

If on a sunny day you climb the steep path leading up from the little wooden bridge still referred to around here as ‘the Bridge of Hesitation’, you will not have to walk far before the roof of my house becomes visible between the tops of two gingko trees. Even if it did not occupy such a commanding position on the hill, the house would still stand out from all others nearby, so that as you come up the path, you may find yourself wondering what sort of wealthy man owns it.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "An Artist of the Floating World"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Kazuo Ishiguro.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Winner of the 2012 Fifty Books/Fifty Covers show, organized by Design Observer in association with AIGA and Designers & Books

Winner of the 2014 Type Directors Club Communication Design Award

Praise for Penguin Drop Caps:

"[Penguin Drop Caps] convey a sense of nostalgia for the tactility and aesthetic power of a physical book and for a centuries-old tradition of beautiful lettering."
—Fast Company

“Vibrant, minimalist new typographic covers…. Bonus points for the heartening gender balance of the initial selections.”
—Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

"The Penguin Drop Caps series is a great example of the power of design. Why buy these particular classics when there are less expensive, even free editions of Great Expectations? Because they’re beautiful objects. Paul Buckley and Jessica Hische’s fresh approach to the literary classics reduces the design down to typography and color. Each cover is foil-stamped with a cleverly illustrated letterform that reveals an element of the story. Jane Austen’s A (Pride and Prejudice) is formed by opulent peacock feathers and Charlotte Bronte’s B (Jane Eyre) is surrounded by flames. The complete set forms a rainbow spectrum prettier than anything else on your bookshelf."
—Rex Bonomelli, The New York Times

"Drool-inducing."
—Flavorwire

"Classic reads in stunning covers—your book club will be dying."
—Redbook

Editorial Reviews

. . . Good writers abound - good novelists are very rare. Kazuo Ishiguro is that rarity. His second novel, ''An Artist of the Floating World,'' is the kind that stretches the reader's awareness, teaching him to read more perceptively. -- New York Times

Kathryn Morton

Like figures on a Japanese screen, the painter Masuji Ono and his daughters Setsuko and Noriko are fixed in the formal attitudes that even their private conversations reflect. In the postwar 1940, the father is a relic of traditional Japan, of teahouses, geishas and patterned gardens not yet destroyed by industry and Westernized thinking. He is unable to communicate with his daughters, unsure of the propriety of his wartime nationalism yet unwilling to exchange it for what seem to him doubtful modern values. His thoughts turn to the optimism of his student days, to uncertainties and disappointments that were mitigated by his sense of a prevailing order, now nowhere apparent. He cannot fathom why his daughters treat him with a disdain that approaches rudeness, why they imply that he and his kind were responsible for the war that killed so many sons, his own among them. And so, despite the rigidity of Ishiguro's prosewhich matches Ono's inflexibilitythe once famous artist gathers pathos as he moves through the pages of a novel that is both a reminder and a warning. Ishiguro wote A Pale View of Hills. (May 5)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

It is postwar Japan and a now retired and seemingly discredited painter, Sensei Ono, reflects on his career, the limits to loyalties between teachers and students, and the life of art. Occasions such as the forthcoming engagement of his daughter (which involves investigations into the family background) bring his involvement with the political campaigns of the prewar regime painfully to the fore of his consciousness. Should he have remained a traditional painter of the floating world of geishas, tea houses, and such? Do his high-minded intentions excuse his propaganda posters? Should an artist follow an aesthetic of pure art or of social involvement? How does a personor a societycome to terms with mistakes of the past? This new novel by the author of A Pale View of Hills will appeal to the thoughtful reader. Recommended. Carl Vogel, San Francisco P.L.

Library Journal

Winner of the 2012 Fifty Books/Fifty Covers show, organized by Design Observer in association with AIGA and Designers & Books

Winner of the 2014 Type Directors Club Communication Design Award

Praise for Penguin Drop Caps:

"[Penguin Drop Caps] convey a sense of nostalgia for the tactility and aesthetic power of a physical book and for a centuries-old tradition of beautiful lettering."
—Fast Company

“Vibrant, minimalist new typographic covers…. Bonus points for the heartening gender balance of the initial selections.”
—Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

"The Penguin Drop Caps series is a great example of the power of design. Why buy these particular classics when there are less expensive, even free editions of Great Expectations? Because they’re beautiful objects. Paul Buckley and Jessica Hische’s fresh approach to the literary classics reduces the design down to typography and color. Each cover is foil-stamped with a cleverly illustrated letterform that reveals an element of the story. Jane Austen’s A (Pride and Prejudice) is formed by opulent peacock feathers and Charlotte Brontë’s B (Jane Eyre) is surrounded by flames. The complete set forms a rainbow spectrum prettier than anything else on your bookshelf."
—Rex Bonomelli, The New York Times

"Drool-inducing."
—Flavorwire

"Classic reads in stunning covers—your book club will be dying."
—Redbook

From the Publisher

What was it like for the Japanese to wage a world war and lose it? Through one man’s eyes we see the pride and patriotism, the devastation and losses, the shame and reversals. Our witness is an artist, trained to see and re-create--but can we trust the memory-pictures he paints? As spare and intricately crafted as a poem, the text (by the author of THE REMAINS OF THE DAY) is perfectly complemented by Case’s refined, aristocratic voice and nearly flawless reading. For the artist-narrator, Case creates a subtle and complex characterization that reveals its secrets gradually, like the novel itself. Other characters are delicately and amusingly differentiated. Highly recommended--both the novel and the recording demand to be enjoyed more than once. S.P. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine

OCT/NOV 00 - AudioFile

What was it like for the Japanese to wage a world war and lose it? Through one man’s eyes we see the pride and patriotism, the devastation and losses, the shame and reversals. Our witness is an artist, trained to see and re-create--but can we trust the memory-pictures he paints? As spare and intricately crafted as a poem, the text (by the author of THE REMAINS OF THE DAY) is perfectly complemented by Case’s refined, aristocratic voice and nearly flawless reading. For the artist-narrator, Case creates a subtle and complex characterization that reveals its secrets gradually, like the novel itself. Other characters are delicately and amusingly differentiated. Highly recommended--both the novel and the recording demand to be enjoyed more than once. S.P. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine

OCT/NOV 00 - AudioFile