Japanese-British writer wins 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature

The Swedish Academy has just announced that the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature belongs to Japanese-British writer Kazuo Ishiguro.

According to the Independent, more than half of the Academy's members voted to select the winner from 350 proposals from literary experts as well as Nobel Prize winners around the world.

Mr. Ishiguro was born in 1954 in Nagasaki, Japan. He moved to England with his family in 1960. He graduated from the University of Kent in 1978 and received a Master's degree in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in 1980.

Writer Kazuo Ishiguro. Photo: Guardian.

His writing career began in 1982, with his debut work A Pale View of Hills, which won the Winifred Holtby Prize of the Royal Society of Literature. In 1989, he won the Man Booker Prize for the novel The Remains of the Day.

In 2008, he was listed by Time magazine as one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. The magazine also called his book Never Let Me Go one of the 100 greatest novels of all time.

In 2016, the Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature to singer-songwriter Bob Dylan for "having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

"If you look back in time, you see Homer and Sappho. They wrote poetic texts, meant for performance. It's similar to Bob Dylan," said Sara Danils, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, at the time.

"We still read and love Homer and Sappho today. We can and should read Bob Dylan."

Citing the song Blonde on Blonde, Sara said it was a great example of Bob Dylan's talent for rhyming, creating choruses and the musical legend's brilliant way of thinking.

Based on data from betting company Unibet, Japanese writer Haruki Murakami and American novelist Toni Morrison are likely to win. Korean poet Ko Un and Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood are also among the frontrunners for this year's Nobel Prize in Literature.

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