If you enjoyed The Remains of the Day, I recommend Kazuo Ishiguro’s earlier novel, An Artist of the Floating World (©1986) which also features an unreliable narrator and explores many of the same themes of selective memory, guilt, and loneliness, albeit in post-war Japan rather than the UK .

During WWII, protagonist Masuji Ono abandons his promising career as an artist to create propaganda posters for the Empire. He returns to his home after the war, but he is out of step with post-war society and especially his children.  Ono is not only an untrustworthy narrator, he is hard to like, cruel, evasive, and alternatively superior and self-pitying. I think he is fascinating, but many of my book club members were less than enthusiastic!

What Other Reviewers Say

Chicago Tribune: “A subtle and generous examination of the  [Japanese] character.”

Who Wrote It

Kazuo Ishiguro is an award-winning Japanese-British novelist, screenwriter, musician, and short story writer. His books include The Remains of the Day (Booker Prize 1989), The Buried Giant, Nocturnes, Never Let Me Go, When We Were Orphans, The Unconsoled, and A Pale View of the Hills. He was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature.