Nocturnes. Five Stories of Music and Nightfall

Nocturnes is a thought-provoking short story collection by Kazuo Ishiguro, the esteemed author of The Remains of the Day, which won the 1989 Booker Prize, Never Let Me Go, and The Buried Giant.

In Nocturnes, Kazuo Ishiguro explores ideas of love, music and the passing of time. From the piazzas of Italy to the ‘hush-hush floor’ of an exclusive Hollywood Hotel, the characters we encounter range from young dreamers to cafe musicians to faded stars, all of them at some moment of reckoning.

Gentle, intimate and witty, this quintet is marked by a haunting theme – the struggle to keep alive a sense of life’s romance, even as one gets older, relationships founder and youthful hopes recede.

«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»,
— Observer

«[They] come up on you quietly, but then haunt you for days … These little pieces could only be the work of a great composer»,
— Evening Standard

«A fine and moving collection of stories, displaying his unique combination of the sad, the stoic and the consoling. It’s about failure, but it dignifies failure, and with it, the human condition»,
— Margaret Drabble, Guardian