My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs

This elegant clothbound edition features Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nobel Lecture in Literature, delivered at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on December 7, 2017.

Awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature for the emotional depth and precision of his fiction, Ishiguro reflects in this lecture on the formative moments of his upbringing and the pivotal “small scruffy moments… quiet, private sparks of revelation” that shaped his career. With the same generosity and humanity found in his novels, he looks beyond his own journey to consider the challenges and responsibilities facing new generations of writers—and what it takes to ensure that literature remains not only alive, but essential.

A profound meditation on writing, creativity, and becoming a writer, this lecture is an enduring work by one of the most accomplished novelists of our time.