Nocturnes

Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

By: Kazuo Ishiguro

Narrated by: Simon Vance

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes an inspired sequence of stories as affecting as it is beautiful.

“A fine and moving collection . . . displaying [Ishiguro's] unique combination of the sad, the stoic and the consoling.” —The Guardian

In this sublime story cycle, Kazuo Ishiguro explores love, music and the passage of time. This quintet ranges from Italian piazzas to the Malvern Hills, a London flat to the “hush-hush floor” of an exclusive Hollywood hotel. Along the way we meet young dreamers, café musicians and faded stars, all at some moment of reckoning.

Gentle, intimate and witty, Nocturnes is underscored by a haunting theme: the struggle to restoke life’s romance, even as relationships flounder and youthful hopes recede.

Critic reviews

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

"A fine and moving collection of stories, displaying [Ishiguro's] unique combination of the sad, the stoic and the consoling. It's about failure, but it dignifies failure, and with it, the human condition. There is nobody like him." —Margaret Drabble, The Guardian Books of the Year

"Each of these stories is heartbreaking in its own way, but some have moments of great comedy, and they all require a level of attention that, typically, Ishiguro's writing rewards." —The Observer

"An amusing read, at times very funny. . . . There are a number of scenes in Nocturnes that are almost worth the price of admission on their own." —The Globe and Mail