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An Artist of the Floating World

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An Artist of the Floating World

Written by: Kazuo Ishiguro
Narrated by: David Case
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About this listen

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.

©2012 Kazuo Ishiguro (P)2017 Vintage Canada Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction United States World Literature
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Profile Image for Jamie Charles

Post War Japan

March 2022 | 3.5/5
A story told through a series of recollections by an older gentleman on his life and career as an artist. Masuji Ono struggles to share an honest interpretation of the past as he constantly attempts to avoid any and all feelings of regret in the retelling. It distorts the narrative as he tip toes the lines.

Ono is proud man - he's earned his station in life, and though the loss of his wife and son wieghs on him, the forthcoming marriage of his youngest daughter gives him much to think about. A year prior she had been in marriage talks that were abruptly cut off. So this creates tension in advance of the marriage negotiations.

Over the course of the novel it becomes clear that Ono is not the man he has presented himself to be. I enjoyed the intergenerational conflict, with the Japan of Ono's memory giving way to the American influences after the war.

Perhaps on a reread I'll appreciate the nature of the story more. It takes long to develop and the unreliable narrator challenges things.

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Profile Image for Tom Taylor

Great book, pretentious sounding narrator

The narrator sounds pretentious and bored. Like he hates his job and is bothered that he's having to do it. Awful reader for a great story.

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