The Buried Giant
In a post-Arthurian England covered by a strange mist that steals memory, an elderly Briton couple, Axl and Beatrice, leave their village to find a son they can barely remember. They cross a country still trembling from the wars between Britons and Saxons, falling in with a Saxon warrior, an aging knight from Arthur's court, and an orphaned boy with a mysterious wound. Ishiguro asks whether the mist that lets former enemies live as neighbors is a curse or a mercy, and whether a marriage built on forgetting can survive the return of memory. The book builds its allegory slowly, with the same quiet precision that Yoko Ogawa brings to The Memory Police.
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What you might want to know about The Buried Giant
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
An elderly couple in post-Arthurian England crosses a mist-covered country in search of a son they can barely remember in Ishiguro's quiet allegorical dystopia.
Yes. The Buried Giant (2015) is a literary fantasy novel set in post-Arthurian Britain, with dragons and ogres alongside the central marriage of an elderly Briton couple. It was Ishiguro's first novel after a long pause.
Both are speculative literary novels by Kazuo Ishiguro. The Buried Giant is fantasy; Klara and the Sun is science fiction. Both share his quiet, restrained voice and concerns with memory and love.
The Buried Giant was written by Kazuo Ishiguro, published in 1900 by Alfred A. Knopf.
The Buried Giant is 317 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, The Buried Giant takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
The Buried Giant is a standalone novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, not part of a series.
The Buried Giant is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.