An Artist of the Floating World

by Kazuo Ishiguro Narrated by David Case

Overview

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Remains of the Day

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.

Editorial Reviews

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

Kathryn Morton

. . . 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

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

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)

Library Journal

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.

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

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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

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171817329
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	08/14/2012
Edition description:	Unabridged

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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