Kazuo Ishiguro's 'An Artist of the Floating World' Republished After Nobel Win

Kazuo Ishiguro, born in Nagasaki in 1954 and winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, saw his 1986 novel 'An Artist of the Floating World' return to Italian bookstores. The novel, originally published in English as Ishiguro has lived in the UK since childhood, was first translated into Italian in 1994 by Laura Lovisetti Fuà for Einaudi under the puzzling title 'Un artista del mondo effimero'. A 2006 paperback edition corrected this to 'Un artista del mondo fluttuante'. The book had gone out of print, overshadowed by Ishiguro's more famous works like 'The Remains of the Day' (1989, Booker Prize) and 'Never Let Me Go' (2005, Time's 100 best English-language novels). Set in post-World War II Japan, the novel features narrator Masuji Ono, a painter whose fame shifts after the war due to his earlier propaganda for imperial values and his role as a police informant. The narrative uses first-person perspective to reveal Ono's gradual self-doubt and reluctance to acknowledge his mistakes. The article, written by Marco Enrico Giacomelli, was published in Artribune Magazine #42.