Kazuo Ishiguro interview
Resources
Books by Kazuo Ishiguro at BookBrowseInterview
A Conversation with Kazuo Ishiguro about Never Let Me Go
What was your starting point for Never Let Me Go?
Over the last fifteen years I kept writing pieces of a story about an odd
group of "students" in the English countryside. I was never sure who these
people were. I just knew they lived in wrecked farmhouses, and though they did a
few typically student-like things—argued over books, worked on the occasional
essay, fell in and out of love—there was no college campus or teacher anywhere
in sight. I knew too that some strange fate hung over these young people, but I
didn't know what. In my study at home, I have a lot of these short pieces, some
going back as far as the early '90s. I'd wanted to write a novel about my
students, but I'd never got any further; I'd always ended up writing some other
quite different novel. Then around four years ago I heard a discussion on the
radio about advances in biotechnology. I usually tune out when scientific
discussions come on, but this time I listened, and the framework around these
students of mine finally fell in place. I could see a way of writing a story
that was simple, but very fundamental, about the sadness of the human condition.