orphans : the orphanage in time
著者（英） Nan Ge
journal or
publication title
Core
number 47
page range 1‑18
year 2019‑03‑10
URL http://doi.org/10.14988/pa.2020.0000000189
I. Introduction
When We Were Orphans, Kazuo Ishiguroʼs fi fth novel, was published in 2000.
Its protagonist is named Christopher Banks, a famous English detective. He spent his childhood in the Shanghai International Settlement in the early 1900s. However, when he was ten years old, his parents mysteriously disappeared; he was then sent to live with his aunt in England. Though, when the novel is set, more than twenty years have passed, Banks still cannot forget what he regards as his mission: to save his parents, who he always believed had been kidnapped in Shanghai. In 1937̶in the midst of the Second Sino-Japanese War̶Banks returns to Shanghai hoping to save the world from yet another war only to fi nd out a truth that shatters his illusions: his father had eloped with his mistress and died some years later, while a Chinese man had forced his mother into concubinage and tortured her. The novel is a mixture of Banksʼs recollections of his childhood̶especially the time he spent with his family and his Japanese friend Akira̶and of his experiences as an adult. These include his obsession with his parents; his affection for Sarah; his adoption of an orphaned girl named Jennifer; and his reunion with his childhood friend, a Japanese soldier, who, for Banks, evokes Akira.
Memory in Kazuo Ishiguroʼs When We Were Orphans:
The Orphanage in Time
Nan Ge
1
This novel shares themes and techniques common to almost all of Ishiguroʼs novels: it is a fi rst-person narrative; and it concerns memory, human emotions, and the nature of metaphor. Like his previous novels, When We Were Orphans deals with the issues of a lost family, ambition, and the innocence of childhood. As for the use of metaphor: though Ishiguro vividly describes the destruction wrought by the war in Shanghai, he confesses that he is not writing history: “Iʼm using [Shanghai] as some sort of metaphorical landscape. Iʼm a very treacherous person; I wouldnʼt trust a writer like me to learn about historical details” (Wong Conversations 183). Besides, he also says that the concept of the “orphan” in the novel is used in a very broad sense: loss of
“the protective world of childhood” in general (Wong Conversations 184). Indeed, Ishiguro once said: “for me, ʻorphansʼ is just a metaphor for that condition of coming out of that bubble in an unprotected way . . . . You leave that protected world and then you suddenly fi nd yourself alone in this harsher world. So in my new novel, Iʼve taken characters who are literally orphans to exaggerate that point” (Shaffer Conversations 168).
Still, some differences distinguish When We Were Orphans from Ishiguroʼs earlier novels. First, as for Banksʼs ambition, Ishiguro regards “Christopher Banksʼs relationship to civilization, to society, to the world, as different. I think there is no logical or rational relationship here between his wanting to solve the mystery about his parents and his wanting to avert the Second World War. Thatʼs a gap that simply cannot be fi lled with any kind of reason or logic; itʼs a purely emotional response.” By contrast, Ishiguroʼs “earlier narrators . . . exist in a more realist world and try to make fairly realistic assessments about how they can contribute to civilization, humanity, or
whatever” (Shaffer Conversations 164). Second, in When We Were Orphans, Banks has not been totally isolated or bereft. In fact, he reconstructs his past together with the other orphans in the novel, and even shares some of their memories, such that they form, in a sense, a “collective.” But, as the novel ends, Banksʼs resolution of his own plight seems more complicated than the resolutions achieved by the other orphans.
Previous studies of When We Were Orphans have often discussed “childhood.”
For example, Cynthia Wong points out that there is, in the novel, “a refusal to let go of a childhood vision of life” (91). She argues that “Banksʼs return to Shanghai as an adult emphasizes the futility of making up for the losses he experienced as an orphan”
(93). Wong suggests that the conclusion of the novel shows that “a parentʼs absence can never be compensated” (96). It may be correct to say that Banks indeed fails to compensate for his loss, especially for the loss of his parents. But is nostalgia for childhood depicted negatively in the novel̶as something utterly meaningless and futile? As Ishiguro himself says: “weʼre remembering, yes, more naïve, more innocent days; but perhaps at the same time nostalgia is a way of imaging the possibility of a world that is actually purer, one less fl awed than the one we know we must inhabit”
(Shaffer Conversations 166-67). Barry Lewis says that Banks exists in a state of homelessness, and states that the novel is “about how ʻour childhood becomes like a foreign land once we have grownʼ . . .”; he speaks also of how childhood can persist through to maturity, when it colours the search for somewhere to belong and be included” (151). Actually, Banks fi nds in childhood the start of his journey, not a foreign land (325). He strives all his life to realize his childhood ambitions. This logic may seem childlike, but one cannot deny that childhood never fades from his memory.
Christopher Ringrose examines the doubleness of the novel, by which he means “the counterpointing of success and failures, and ironic contradictions” (182). He declares that Banks “is a perpetual exile and orphan who has no home except childhood memories” (182). It is true that the novel should not be taken too literally, and Ishiguro foregoes a simple ending for an open one. Still, the concept of “home,” requires careful and detailed scrutiny. Yugin Teo says that Banks “needs to lose his childhood innocence” (115) in order to become an adult, and concludes that Banks fi nally lets go of the past (117). However, does Banks really give up his memory of the past? The answer is not as simple as Teo suggests. Even at the end of the novel, Banks still takes comfort from, and consolation in, the memory of his childhood̶though he is well aware of the realities he must confront as an adult. Besides, Teo also discusses the contrast between collective trauma̶the fractious alliance between the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communists, and, of course, the larger war between China and Japan̶and Banksʼs individual trauma, namely his “private pursuit of his parents”
(45). In my opinion, in When We Were Orphans “collective trauma” more properly involves the orphans (who have no protection) and Banks, who, though he is a part of this community, is nonetheless unique.
In this paper, I will continue to focus on the role of memory in this novel. Along with the other characters, Banks reconstructs a complete “home”. But as time goes by, after this beautiful bubble has been burst, the characters come to know the truths of their present lives̶the harsh facts of the adulthood. All of them lose an original, safe world that had supported and warmed them, and fi nd themselves abandoned to a state of “orphanage” in which they lack essential protections. So, they start looking for a
way out of their desperate situations. Some choose to fall back on memories of their innocent past, and long for a better world to come, whereas some come to terms with their current situations. Banks is trapped in a dilemma in which, on one hand, he understands the necessity to accept reality, become an adult, and put things right, but in which, on the other hand, he retreats into a childlike innocence so as to obtain relief and consolation when faced with futility. To return to the innocence of childhood is to fall prey to unrealistic hopes; each step we take towards adulthood brings us closer to desperate realities. And this dilemma̶pitting the nostalgia for childhood innocence against the “bravery” necessary to forget the past and to accept the reality of adulthood̶is life itself: we all must face it.
II. Memory of a Beautiful Bubble
Before he returns to Shanghai, Banks remembers his childhood in Shanghai. He thinks again of his house and its environs, and of the Chinese servants; he recalls the disputes his parents fell into concerning the opium trade his fatherʼs company engaged in; and of course he thinks also of his parentsʼ disappearance, and of the detective games he played with his friend Akira, during which they dreamed up ways to rescue his father (127). Banks had imagined that his father was treated kindly̶that he was held in a house which was “comfortable and clean” (131) by kidnappers who “were not evil after all, simply men with starving families” (132) who “always addressed [Bankʼs father] as though they were his servants” (131-32). And Banks holds fast to that childhood memory even into adulthood, when he becomes a real detective. So,
Banks always thinks that he hasnʼt really lost his parents, who remain held, as he prefers to believe them to have been, in “comfort and dignity” (131), waiting for him to rescue them.
Banksʼs ambition to be a detective is stimulated not only by the disappearance of his parents but also by another childhood memory. When he was in Shanghai, his friend Akira told him that “we children . . . were like the twine that kept the slats held together . . . it was we children who bound not only a family, but the whole world together. If we did not do our part, the slats would fall and scatter over the fl oor” (87).
After Banks is grown, he still believes that he also has a responsibility to “combat”
(24) and “root out” (35) evil̶a responsibility to save the world from chaos. He repeats Akiraʼs words: “those of us whose duty it is to combat evil . . . . Weʼre like the twine that holds together the slats of a wooden blind. Should we fail to hold strong, then everything will scatter” (160-61). In short, his intention to become a detective, to save his parents, and to save the world all emerge from childhood memories: he declares that being a detective “is hardly the whim of a moment. Itʼs a calling Iʼve felt my whole life” (18).
Moreover, their similarity and sense of belonging̶as Banks remembers them̶make Banksʼ relationship to Akira something more than mere friendship; it is as though they are twin brothers. Though Banks is English and Akira is Japanese, they share the diffi cult experience of trying to assimilate in their respective countries.
Banks recalls that after he had been sent back to England, he behaved like “an odd bird at school” (5 and 7), just “observing a mannerism many of the boys adopted when standing and talking” (8); and so it was with Akira. During their days in Shanghai,
Akira went back to Japan for a period. He “had been mercilessly ostracized for his ʻforeignnessʼ; his manners, his attitudes, his speech, a hundred other things had marked him out as different . . . ” (106). So, because of their “foreignness,” Banks and Akira alike seem to be “mongrel[s]” (90); they are “mixture[s]” (91). In their childhoods, both of these little boys felt a sense of belonging in Shanghai, which they regarded as a home from which they were forced out:
ʻOld chap!ʼ [Akira] said. ʻWe live here together, always!ʼ ʻThatʼs right,ʼ [Banks] said. ʻWeʼll live in Shanghai for ever.ʼ ʻOld chap! Always!ʼ (134)
In fact, to some extent, Akira is also an “orphan.” He found himself cast out of the familiar atmosphere he once inhabited and thrown into a foreign land, deprived of all protection̶just like Banks.
In addition, in England Banks develops an affection for Sarah Hemmings, another orphan who seems to have lost her parents “for ever,” but who nonetheless feels “theyʼre always with her” (56). And Banks gradually comes to regard her as his
“wife,” at least in memory. He says: “I realized that in this talk of a wife, I had had a picture of Sarah in my mind” (227). Besides, Banks has adopted Jennifer, a child whose parents died in an accident when she was ten years old̶the same age Banks had been when he lost his parents. And Banks regards her as his “daughter,” (229) asserting that he “already [has] a child . . . in [his] care” (229).
Therefore, we see how Banks, in retrospect, reconstructs a beautiful bubble of a complete home, mainly with other orphans. There, he is an ambitious detective with a holy mission to save the world; there, he does not really lose his parents; there, he
has a close friend who sometimes functions as his brother, playing detective games and sharing experiences; there, he even possesses a harmonious household with a wife, daughter and loyal servant. Banks is an integrated and protected man̶at least in his memory.
III. When They Were Orphans
In the bubble Banks creates with other orphans, they seem to enjoy normal lives; they seem to live as if they were not orphans at all. However, as the fateful year 1937 approaches in Shanghai, everything changes. The bubble bursts.
Once in Shanghai, Banks tries hard to search for his parents. Finally his Uncle Philip, who had been his parentsʼ friend for many years reveals the truth. Philip tells Banks that his father had “always loved” his mother. He says that Banksʼ father
“[w]anted desperately to make himself good enough for her, and when he found he didnʼt have it in him, well, he went off. With someone who didnʼt mind him as he was”
(337-38). And in order to “protect” (337) Banks, his mother and Uncle Philip had kept the truth of his fatherʼs disappearance from Banks, allowing him to believe that detectives would, in any case, fi nd his father. And as for Banksʼs mother: she ends up as “one of several concubines” (343) to a Chinese warlord named Wang Ku, who tortures her for many years. Philip continues: “she would have found a way, she would have done it [i.e. taken her own life]. But there was you to consider . . . she made an arrangement. You would be fi nancially provided for in return for . . . for her compliance” (344). It becomes clear that all the good times Banks enjoyed over the
years, and all the education he received, is due to the sacrifi ces his mother made. As Philip says: “she only lived for you, worried for you” (344). “She wanted you to live in your enchanted world for ever. But itʼs impossible. In the end it has to shatter”
(346). So, that seemingly pure world Banks had enjoyed̶a world made possible only by his mother̶fi nally collapses as Banks learns the truth. The bubble bursts; Banksʼs intention to save his parents is thwarted. In addition, it could be said that Banksʼs mother is, in a sense, also an “orphan.” Her husband abandons her, and she leaves her son, only to be abused by another man in order that Banks might have a good life. So, Banksʼs mother really has no home, and no protection; she, too, is “orphaned,” living alone and enduring pain in a cruel, foreign world.
Then, Banksʼs other ambition̶that of somehow saving the world̶is also thwarted by reality. While trying to fi nd his parents, Banks gets caught in the crossfi re in a battle between Chinese and Japanese troops. There, he saves an injured Japanese solider whom he treats as if he were Akira. Meanwhile, they witness the cruelty of war. The screams of the wounded give Banks the impression that “this was what each of us would go through on our way to death̶that these terrible noises were as universal as the crying of new-born babies” (304-05). War makes ever more “orphans,”
both physically and mentally̶men and women deprived of the protections their families might provide, men and women deprived also of their native countries̶of a world in which they did not feel like aliens. Such is the case with the solider “Akira,”
who is left alone on the battlefi eld to face destruction by others of his kind̶soldiers.
As for Banks, he comforts his imaginary “Akira,” who is nostalgic for childhood, by saying that “when we were children, when things went wrong, there wasnʼt much we
could do to help put it right. But now weʼre adult, now we can… we can fi nally put things right” (309). However, as Banks gradually comes to learn, whether child or adult, he can never hold off chaos. “Thatʼs not my fault,” he says. “In fact, itʼs no longer my concern” (348). So, Banksʼs ambitions are forever frozen in the memory of that beautiful bubble, in the past.
And as for Sarah, before she marries Cecil, she is quite “ambitious” (54) that she will marry “someone whoʼll really contribute . . . to humanity, to a better world.” She declares: “I come in search of distinguished ones . . . I wonʼt accept itʼs my fate to waste my life on some pleasant, polite, morally worthless man” (55). Unfortunately, Cecil is not the one she is looking for. After they come to Shanghai, Cecil degenerates into a gambler, living in a dirty room, bickering with Sarah̶even preferring “people to mistake [his] wife for a harlot” (204). Sarah pretends to remain calm before Banks, , saying, for instance, “we enjoy being low-life” (199); but she is desperate to be
“rescued” (193) by someone. The marriage with Cecil has “fallen short of” (249) her hope. She realizes that her expectations for Cecil are “beyond” (249) him, so she turns to Banks, asking Banks to go with her to Macao (249). But fi nally, Sarah leaves for Macao alone, once she fi nds that there is also no hope for her with Banks. He has lost all possibility of having the family he remembers and imagines. Furthermore, Sarah feels ever more keenly her own fate as an orphan. In the past, Sarah had been
“protected” or buoyed up by her hope to marry some great man; but she fails. She, too, is spiritually unprotected.
We are left to conclude that orphans̶Banks, Akira, Sarah, Jennifer, and Banksʼ mother̶are all deprived of memories, faith, safety. The “enchanted world . . . has to
shatter” (346) in the end. They are alone in a harsh world without quarter.
IV. Innocence or Adulthood?
Since Ishiguroʼs characters have experienced ups and downs, and since some of them have already found out the truths of their lives, what will they do in order to their tragedies?
As for Banksʼs mother: years of torture have left her mentally ill; she remembers nothing but the little Banks in his childhood. She repeats Banksʼs boyhood nickname,
“Puffi n” (358), and “for a moment seemed lost in happiness. Then she shook her head and said, ʻThat boy. Heʼs such a worry to meʼ” (358)̶an utterance spoken with affection, not resentment. So, Banksʼs mother regresses into a primitive state in which she forgets all the sorrow and pain she has experienced; nothing seems real to her but her little boy Banks, the innocence of his childhood, and her youthful responsibilities as a mother. She creates a small world for herself, like a piece of white paper: only she̶a mother and her son̶living there, without anyone else, without any other color.
As for the solider, the man who stands in (for Banks) as “Akira”: he retreats into an innocence which he thinks is better than anything the adult has to offer. He recalls the “good memories” of childhood (308), and believes that “it is good to be nos-tal- gic. Very important . . . . When we nostalgic, we remember. A world better than this world we discover when we grow. We remember and wish good world come back again. So very important. Just now, I had dream. I was boy. Mother, father, close to
me. In our house” (310). Meanwhile, this fanciful “Akira” expects “children” to save the world, by begging Banks: “Tell him [my son]. I die for country. Tell him, be good to mother. Protect. And build good world” (308), for “he think world is a good place.
Kind people. His toys. His mother, father” (309). This corresponds to the real Akiraʼs belief that children are the “twine” that holds the world together̶just as Banks remembers it from his own childhood.
Her disappointment with Cecil allows Sarah to know the truth of her life. Her ambition to marry someone who will change the world is unrealistic. So she turns to Banks, accepting his offer to make “a little family” (252) together with Jennifer. She confesses: “Iʼve wasted all these years looking for something . . . . But I donʼt want it any more, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become. Something, that will just be there, always, like tomorrowʼs sky” (251). Though Banks does not meet Sarah to go to Macao together as he promised, she does hesitates no more and departs alone, resolutely. Twenty years later, Banks still remembers the letter Sarah wrote him about the “happiness and companionship” (367) she had felt. Sarahʼs change indicates that she starts to understand reality, to be emotionally mature; she compromises with fate.
We do not know whether or not such maturity will really satisfy her. Banks has his doubts: “was her life with her French count really what she set off to fi nd that day she stepped out on to the jetty in Shanghai? I somehow doubt it. My feeling is that she is thinking of herself as much as of me when she talks of a sense of mission, and the futility of attempting to evade it” (367). But it is thinking of life as “tomorrowʼs sky”
that helps Sarah step out of the bubble she once created for herself.
As for little Jennifer: in an accident, she loses her trunk, but she says to Banks:
“Iʼm not upset. After all, they were just things. When youʼve lost your mother and your father, you canʼt care so much about things, can you? . . . You have to look forward in life” (157). Actually, the trunk, and those “things,” are not lifeless objects. They are the reminders of Jenniferʼs past, a past in which she had a sweet home with her parents;
these things represent all the memories of her childhood. But now that Jennifer has lost her home and her parents, she chooses to “forget” (158) those “things” so that they will not trouble her. However, is Jennifer really able to ignore the memory of her past?
When Banks returns parts of the trunk to her, she is not apathetic, but “cautious” (175),
“with a sudden wariness” (175). She even says that “when youʼre at school, sometimes, you forget. Just sometimes. You count the days until the holidays like the other girls do, and then you think youʼll see Mother and Papa again” (176). So one might say that Jennifer indeed misses her parents and cherishes those “things” and the old days, but in order to move forward, she has to be “brave” (157), to accept the reality that she is an orphan, by forcing herself to bury her memory of the past in her heart.
Finally, as for Banks: his reaction is not as simple as his motherʼs amnesia or Akiraʼs nostalgic hope to regain the innocence of childhood; nor is it as simple as Sarahʼs determination to accept the reality of adulthood, or Jenniferʼs move into adulthood by repressing her memory of childhood. Banks wanders between these alternatives.
On the one hand, Banks is likely to retreat into memories of childhood. He persists in his mission to fi nd his mother, which stems from his childhood, because he thinks “for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long
years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm” (367). In the end, Banks fi nds his in a monastery in Hong Kong in 1958, suffering from amnesia. After he sees his motherʼs obsession with the innocent little Banks, he realizes that “sheʼd never ceased to love me, not for a single moment” (359).
So not only his mother, but also Banks fi nds relief and comfort in the memory of childhood; this seems to confi rm that he has not totally lost his parents, and that they still “protect” him in a way, even as he has remembered it in childhood. Besides, Banksʼs memory of his childhood has supported him all along. When little Banks leaves Shanghai for England after losing his parents, Colonel Chamberlain says to him (on the ship): “My poor lad. First your father. Now your mother. Must feel like the whole worldʼs collapsed around your ear. But weʼll go to England tomorrow, the two of us. Your auntʼs waiting for you there. So be brave. Youʼll soon pick up the pieces again” (30). Not coincidently, more than twenty years later, Jennifer loses her parents, and Banks encourages her to face the tragedy and to “build a happy future” (176). He repeats to her what was said to him: “Itʼs very diffi cult sometimes, I know. Itʼs as though your whole worldʼs collapsed around you. But Iʼll say this for you, Jenny.
Youʼre making a marvelous job of putting the pieces together again . . .” (176). So, it would be more accurate to say that Banks “transplants” his childhood memory and emotions into Jennifer than to say that Jennifer is simply a young Banks in miniature.
He repeats Colonel Chamberlainʼs words, not only to comfort Jennifer, but also to remind himself that he has been “putting the pieces together again” since childhood.
That episode from his childhood does give Banks some consolation. Finally, as the
dust settles down, Banks returns to England. Jennifer insists that he live with her, and says: “if thatʼs a promise, then youʼd better watch out. Because Iʼll make sure it happens. Then youʼll have to come and live in your shed” (363). Jennifer is certain of the promise she made as a child: when she was still a little girl, she told Banks, before he had gone to Shanghai, that “once Iʼm older . . . Iʼll be able to help you . . . I promise you I will . . . . Remember that Iʼm here, in England, and Iʼll help you when you come back” (256). So young Jenniferʼs determination to protect Banks reminds him of his own naïve, idealistic thought that an adult could put things right as he once told the solider he took for “Akira”; and it is their grandiloquence that proves they still think with an innocent childlike logic, knowing nothing of the harsher sides of adulthood.
But still, the conversation with Jennifer leads Banks to be “grateful” for her (362), since he feels that “they understand each otherʼs concerns instinctively” (364), being provided with “a source of consolation . . . over the years” (364). And Banks agrees to
“give Jenniferʼs invitation serious thought” (368). So, Banks fi nds resonance in Jenniferʼs innocent idealism. “When a sort of emptiness fi lls [his] hours” (368), there will be an inclination for Banks to retreat to the memory of innocence and thereby escape the reality of life.
But, on the other hand, Banks is aware̶whether consciously or subconsciously̶
that the bubble of a protected childhood will shatter anyway: “all this about how good the world looked when we were boys . . . . Itʼs just that the adults led us on. One mustnʼt get too nostalgic for childhood” (309). He accepts the changes and says:
“thereʼs no need to turn back the clock just for the sake of it” (228). After all his efforts, he compromises with life, with fate: “Tried is right. It all amounted to very little in the
end” (363). At the end of the story, considering Jenniferʼs plan, Banks also admits that
“this city [London], in other words, has come to be my home, and I should not mind if I had to live out the rest of my days here” (368). Banks is persuading himself to face up to reality, to step into a real adulthood where he is futile, alone, and unprotected. In fact, “home” takes various shapes and meanings for Banks: the house in Shanghai with his parents and Akira; his imagined home with Sarah and Jennifer, which was for him a bubble; his possible future home with Jennifer, where he might be protected again; and London, where he needs to face the realities of adulthood. These several visions of “home” show the stages of Banksʼs movement from a protective bubble to a fl oating world where nothing is absolute. No one man is capable of changing history, of changing the world.
V. Conclusion
In a word, in the novel of When We Were Orphans, “orphans” are not only children who lose their parents in childhood. One can also be orphaned in a psychological sense, as when one feels emotionally unprotected. Together with other orphans, Banks draws out of his memory a beautiful bubble where they enjoy a great sense of safety. However, things do not develop as they wish. The bubbles burst, and they must fi nd a way out. These orphans choose either to retreat into an innocence which though it might give them unrealistic hopes also gives them the momentum they need to live, or to be brave enough to move into the real world of adulthood.
Banks, however, faces a dilemma. He longs for the innocence of a childhood that
again provides him protection; but at the same time, he knows that there is no way back and that he must accept the futility of life. Kazuo Ishiguro offers no clear answer as to which side is right, or as to which way Banks should take. The truth is that time will eventually make orphans of us all. We might well be overcome with confl icting emotions when faced with such a dilemma, but in it lies growth and truth.
Works Cited
Beedham, Matthew. The Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro: A Reader’s Guide to Essential Criticism.
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Bennett, Caroline. “ʼCemeteries are No Places for Young Peopleʼ: Children and Trauma in the Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro.” Kazuo Ishiguro: New Critical Visions of the Novels.
Edited by Sebastian Groes and Barry Lewis. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 83-91.
Drag, Wojciech. Revisiting Loss: Memory, Trauma and Nostalgia in the Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. When We Were Orphans. Faber and Faber, 2000.
Lewis, Barry. Kazuo Ishiguro: Contemporary World Writers. Manchester UP, 2000.
Ringrose, Christopher. “ʼIn the end it has to shatterʼ: The Ironic Doubleness of Kazuo Ishiguroʼs When We Were Orphans.” Kazuo Ishiguro: New Critical Visions of the Novels. Edited by Sebastian Groes and Barry Lewis. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 171-183.
Shaffer, Brian W. “An Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro.” Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro.
Edited by Brian W. Shaffer and Cynthia F. Wong. U of Mississippi P, 2008, pp. 161- 173.
Sim, Wai-chew. Kazuo Ishiguro. Routledge, 2010.
Teo, Yugin. Kazuo Ishiguro and Memory. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Weston, Elizabeth. “Commitment Rooted in Loss: Kazuo Ishiguroʼs When We Were Orphans.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 53, no. 4, 2012, pp. 337- 354.
Wong, Cynthia F. Kazuo Ishiguro. Northcote House, 2005.
---. “Like Idealism Is to the Intellect: An Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro.” Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro. Edited by Brian W. Shaffer and Cynthia F. Wong. U of Mississippi P, 2008, pp. 174-188.
