Kazuo Ishiguro

(Note: This article is taken straight from Psychologies Magazine.

Kazuo Ishiguro

Novelist Kazuo Ishiguro,56, was born in Nagasaki, Japan, but moved to England as a child. He has been nominated for the Man Booker Prize four times, winning in 1989 for "The Remains Of The Day", which became an Oscar-Nominated film. He lives in London with his wife and daughter. 

What inspires you?
I'm interested in what people do with their lives, as it's easy to waste the precious years we have. In a sad way, life is too short for us to learn to do it properly. It's poignant to see someone realising it's too late to rectify mistakes. They can't regenerate, like Doctor Who. You only get one chance. That's the overall theme in 'Never Let Me Go', 'The Remains Of The Day' and most of my other books.

How do you feel about getting older?
Nobody likes ageing, but being young is full of insecurities.
I have a teenage daughter and , when I see her friends, I think, 'God! There's so much they have to go through'. It might be nice to stay around mid-thirties for ever, but there's something interesting about continuing the journey.

What would be your advice for your childhood self?
Don't take life so seriously. But y generation was very privileged. We didn't fear unemployment. Kids today are under huge pressure. So my advice would be not to get stressed out. I try to pass that on to my daugjter, but it's a tense, competitive world for young people.

Do you enjoy reading other people's book?
Yes although I used to avoid reading fiction beacuse the voices might spill into my writing. I'd go years without reading a novel. It was films that shaped my ideaog how to tell a story. [Film-maker Michael] Powel and [Emeric] Pressburger had a profound influence on me. When I started writing about Englans, I was inspired by films such as The Life And Death of Colonel Blimp.

Who's your favourite fictional hero or heroine?
I'm fond of Charlotte Brontë's narrators : Lucy Snowe in Villette, and Jane Eyre. I learned a lot from them about emotionally restrained characters who don't really tell the reader what they're feeling. You have to read between the lines. 

How do you like to work?
If I'm writing a first draft, I do three or four hours a day at most, as the quality goes after a while. But once I've got a rough draft, and I'm not digging into something nebulous and strange, I can work for much longer. I prefer to write longhand, for the first draft anyway, because I like the intimacy of it. I only use the internet for email and looking up easential things. I'm not on facebook.

Have you ever suffered a crisis of confidence?
I've never been confident about my abilities. When I finish a book, it always feelks like a complete and utter fluke. I think ,'I got lucky that time, but I can't rely on it happening again.' It's a perpetual crisis of confident.

A film adaptatiom of Kazuo Ishigura's novel 'Never let me Go", starring Keira Knightley and Carey Mullingan, is in cinemas on 11 February.

Complided by me 
"PSYCHOLOGIES" magazine, issued on February 2011.