I'm watching the news this morning. They're talking about a 30-year-old conflict between Serbs and Bosniaks. This used to be the beautiful country of Yugoslavia. Now you can go from one country to another in a day. But what can happen when you bring up a 30 year old conflict on a global scale. Another hot spot on the planet?
Sir Kazuo Ishiguro (カズオ・イシグロ or 石黒 一雄), OBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist of Japanese origin and Nobel Laureate in Literature (2017). His family moved to England in 1960. Ishiguro obtained his Bachelor's degree from the University of Kent in 1978 and his Master's from the University of East Anglia's creative writing course in 1980. He became a British citizen in 1982. He now lives in London.
This is what I consider to be the main theme in the novel "The Buried Giant" - to remember or to forget. If you are expecting to read a novel by a Japanese author, you should choose another book. This novel is by a true British author, Japanese by birth. The setting is medieval England covered in mists. It was once brutally fought between Britons and Saxons, who now coexist peacefully with each other. The country is inhabited by fantastic creatures. Here you will meet and terrible ogres and evil elves and even a huge dragon, causing terror to the inhabitants of these places. It is in such an amazing place that this story begins.
An elderly couple Axel and Beatrice live in one of the villages, alone without a son, and together with their fellow villagers they run a common household. One day they get the idea to go to visit their son. However, where exactly their son lives, they somehow do not remember. And whatever they do not try to remember from their lives, everything is erased or as in a fog, there are almost no memories. So do the people around them. Any event is quickly forgotten.
The couple will meet many adventures on their way, as well as people. Mostly people will be good, each in his own way. After all, this couple has a great relationship with each other and treat people well and there is peace and love between them, they are very afraid of losing each other. But the people they meet on their way, different goals. As they move towards meeting their son, the elderly couple learns that it is not the fog that shrouds the country, but the magic breath of the dragoness, the so-called fog, because of which people do not remember anything.
So gradually, because of events, conversations, discoveries, they begin to remember the events of their lives. I will not tell you what exactly they remembered and what happened to them, so that you will remain interested in reading the novel. But what is revealed to this couple has the potential to destroy their relationship and the fragile world of others. And so one wonders what is better to remember or forget. This story does not have an end, you yourself can finish it. One question remains open, what is better to remember or forget.
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