Kazuo Ishiguro wins the Nobel Prize in literature 2017

Ishiguro, author of novels including The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, was praised by the Swedish Academy for novels which “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world” and were driven by a “great emotional force”.

Ishiguro said he was both honoured and “taken completely by surprise” after he was named the winner, even initially wondering if the announcement was a case of “fake news”.

“You’d think someone would tell me first but none of us had heard anything,” said Ishiguro, who had been sitting at his kitchen table at home in Golders Green in London about to have brunch, when he got the call from his agent. “It was completely not something I expected, otherwise I would have washed my hair this morning,” he said with a laugh. “It was absolute chaos. My agent phoned to say it sounded like they had just announced me as the Nobel winner, but there’s so much fake news about these days it’s hard to know who or what to believe so I didn’t really believe it until journalists started calling and lining up outside my door.”

Ishiguro, who was born in Nagasaki in Japan but moved to the UK when he was five, said he was “tremendously proud” to receive the award and emphasised how much he hoped it would be a force for good at a time of global instability.

“This is a very weird time in the world, we’ve sort of lost faith in our political system, we’ve lost faith in our leaders, we’re not quite sure of our values, and I just hope that my winning the Nobel prize contributes something that engenders good will and peace,” he said. “It reminds us of how international the world is, and we all have to contribute things from our different corners of the world.”

With names including Margaret Atwood, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o and Haruki Murakami leading the odds at the bookmakers, Ishiguro was a surprise choice

Ishiguro studied creative writing at the University of East Anglia, going on to publish his first novel, A Pale View of the Hills, in 1982. He has been a full-time writer ever since. According to the Academy, the themes of “memory, time and self-delusion” weave through his work, particularly in The Remains of the Day, which won Ishiguro the Booker prize in 1989 and was adapted into a film starring Anthony Hopkins as the “duty-obsessed” butler Stevens.

The Nobel Prize for literature comes with winnings of 9m Swedish krona. Permanent secretary of the academy, Sara Danius, spoke to Ishiguro about his win around an hour after the announcement. It was a marked change to previous winners such as Bob Dylan, who took weeks to acknowledge the accolade, and Doris Lessing, who famously responded with a derisive “oh Christ” when the news was broken to her by reporters.