An Artist of the Floating World
In postwar Japan, the celebrated painter Masuji Ono drifts through the half-rebuilt streets of his city, attending marriage negotiations for his younger daughter and trading polite visits with old colleagues. Behind the careful courtesies a quieter reckoning is underway, his prewar art having lent its prestige to the imperial cause that brought ruin on his country. Kazuo Ishiguro's second novel uses Ono's evasive, drifting recollections to map the gap between the man he believes himself to be and the choices he has made. Spare, exquisitely composed, and deeply Japanese in its restraint, the book turns memory itself into a kind of floating world, beautiful, treacherous, and dissolving on inspection.
Themes & atmosphere
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What you might want to know about An Artist of the Floating World
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
In late-1940s Japan, a once-celebrated painter walks his city, negotiates his daughter's marriage talks, and slowly examines his own role in the nationalist cause that defined his earlier life.
Yes. An Artist of the Floating World won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 1986 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize the same year. It was Kazuo Ishiguro's second novel and helped establish his reputation before The Remains of the Day.
An Artist of the Floating World is fictional but set in postwar Japan and examines real generational tensions of the period. Ishiguro wrote it without ever visiting Japan as an adult, drawing on imagination and research.
An Artist of the Floating World was written by Kazuo Ishiguro, published in 1986 by Faber & Faber, Limited.
An Artist of the Floating World is 208 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, An Artist of the Floating World takes most readers 3 to 5 hours to finish.
An Artist of the Floating World is a standalone novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, not part of a series.
An Artist of the Floating World is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.