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When We Were Orphans: A Novel by Kazuo…
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When We Were Orphans: A Novel (original 2000; edition 2001)

by Kazuo Ishiguro

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
5,5721271,825 (3.47)295
"England, 1930s. Christopher Banks has become the country's most celebrated detective, his cases the talk of London society. Yet one unsolved crime always haunted him: the mysterious disappearance of his parents, in Old Shanghai, when he was a small boy. Now, as the world lurches towards total war, Banks realizes that the time has come for him to return to the city of his childhood and at last solve the mystery - that only by doing so will civilization be saved from the approaching catastrophe." "Moving between London and Shanghai of the inter-war years, When We Were Orphans is a story of memory, intrigue and the need to return: of a childhood vision of the world surviving deep into adulthood, indelibly shaping and distorting a person's life."--Jacket.… (more)
Member:jhowell
Title:When We Were Orphans: A Novel
Authors:Kazuo Ishiguro
Info:Vintage (2001), Paperback, 335 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:***1/2
Tags:literary fiction

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When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro (2000)

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English (118)  Spanish (2)  Italian (2)  Dutch (2)  French (1)  German (1)  Hebrew (1)  All languages (127)
Showing 1-5 of 118 (next | show all)
Obviously, I have a big book crush on Ishiguro. When We Were Orphans isn't my favorite of his, but I did cry like a baby at the end. What is it about his books that gets to me? If I had to boil it down, I'd say it's that they're these beautiful tragedies. And (is this getting too sloppy?) that's what kills me about life. It's sad. It's beautiful. Gosh. I might start crying right now just thinking about it. ( )
  LibrarianDest | Jan 3, 2024 |
A very gripping story from an extremely interesting setting. ( )
  c1nnamongirl | Aug 11, 2023 |
Ironically, this is a radically different approach to being an orphan from the last book I read, John Irving’s The Cider House Rules. In Cider House, an orphan protagonist follows his principles, compromises but eventually makes it through to an honourable ending. In When We Were Orphans, the orphaned protagonist stumbles around deceiving himself and pursuing ambiguous goals until he finds that his life and ideas are fictions. Also, while Cider House was enjoyable to read, this book feels a bit like a bad dream that goes from one misery to a worse one.
The book of course is written with Ishiguro’s usual skill, delicately exploring how the protagonist, Christopher, imagines himself in one deception after another. In this, it’s like other Ishiguro books, with characters who either deceive themselves or are deceived. I felt more empathy for his other characters, though, even Klara who is not actually human. For Christopher, I felt from the beginning that he was living in a child-like make-believe world, and continues to do so as an adult. His fantasy is his way of coping with the traumas of his childhood, but I always felt that he should get a grip (or get some therapy) and join the real world. His self-importance is unattractive, perhaps made even more so by his telling readers repeatedly that he is known as a great detective, but does not say anything about any of his cases or his methods. His claim to be a great detective grows particularly questionable when he seems to live in a fantasy.
Initially, his imaginary world seems harmless. As a child, he plays at being a superhero or detective rescuing his missing father. Later, he says he has solved important cases as a young detective, and perhaps he has. When he is drawn into the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s, his stories become a nightmare about international diplomacy and urban warfare with improbable coincidence, extraordinary heroism and criminal corruption. (Here, he’s the opposite of a James Bond heroic spy. He’s portrayed as a weak figure overwhelmed by the reality of violence and corruption. Is Ishiguro deliberately undercutting the false heroism of the Bond myth?) It’s hard to separate the reality in the novel from Christopher’s story telling, but he seems to abandon both his purported clients and those he seems to love in order to pursue his dream of saving his parents. How can he be so irresponsible when he claims to be so principled?
Christopher’s memories of his childhood seem to have little connection to the reality he later attempts to revisit. The physical places he returns to are not as he remembers them, and the situation is far worse. This is probably true of all of us to a degree. The past we remember is not the same as other people experienced it, and sometimes it’s demonstrably wrong. But I think this usually means that we colour things a bit better or worse than they might have been. I hope that our memories are not so destructively mistaken as Ishiguro portrays them here. But perhaps, viewing things less personally, they are: as nations and peoples, we do tell ourselves false stories about our history and relationships, and we use those to justify exploitation and military attacks on other nations. In part, this seems to be what is happening in Ukraine, the Balkan states, the Middle East, Africa. So from this perspective, misleading stories that lead to more violence and abuse could be a very relevant one. I didn’t get that from the novel while I was reading it, but thinking back, there are parallels with the self-serving myths of the colonial powers in China (and elsewhere) that cover up reality and justify continuing exploitation.
Toward the end of the novel, a character says, “…our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years in the shadows of vanished parents. There’s nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, but until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.” But Christopher doesn’t see through it until he is forced into a very sordid reality. ( )
  rab1953 | Aug 9, 2023 |
For most of this lengthy novel, I would give a 4 but must admit that there were times that I begin to lose interest. Christopher Banks is a young man growing up in the international section of Shanghai in the early 1900's. His best friend was a Japanese boy who had never lived in Japan just as Christopher (known as Puffin) to his parents) had never lived in England but had a very British upbringing.

Both parents mysteriously disappear and Christopher becomes a very famous detective back in England as a grown man. Here he encounters a woman named Sarah who at first shuns him but is someone who becomes a part of his life. All his life he intends to return to China in order to find his parents.

Then with the coming Communists in the background, the returns to Shanghai; finds his Japanese friend who is now fighting the Chinese. There is interesting history here especially the opium trade in China which was brought about by British companies.

Overall, a good listen (loved the narrator). ( )
  maryreinert | May 18, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 118 (next | show all)
When We Were Orphans may well be Ishiguro's most capacious book so far, in part because it stitches together his almost microscopic examination of self-delusion, as it plays out in lost men, with a much larger, often metaphorical look at complacency on a national scale.
added by jburlinson | editNew York Review of Books, Pico Iyer (pay site) (Oct 5, 2000)
 
Christopher Banks is a fashionable society detective, solving fashionably ghastly crimes in 1930s England. In his past, however, there is an unsolved and traumatic crime which continues to torment him. He was brought up in Shanghai, with a father heavily involved in Western complicity in the importation of opium
added by bergs47 | editThe Guardian, Philip Hensher (Mar 19, 2000)
 
Das neue Buch ist eine Überraschung. Denn es kommt so ganz anders daher, es tut so, als werde hier einmal Handfestes geboten, ein Kriminalfall! Ein Kind verliert seine Eltern. Ein schreckliches Familiendrama. Eine historische Erzählung, die sich im China der Opiumkriege entfaltet, Kolonialismus, Bandenkrieg, es birgt, natürlich, auch die Geschichte einer vergeblichen Liebe, und es gehört zum Abenteuerlichen dieser Lektüre, dass wir alle paar Seiten der Illusion erliegen, nun aber endlich zu erahnen, worauf wir uns hier einzulassen haben. Ahnungen, die uns mit dem Wenden einer Seite weggeschlagen werden, was die Gedanken nicht unangenehm verwirrt, so wie wenn die Achterbahn abrupt die Richtung wechselt und es uns herumschleudert und wir die Gravidität der Gehirnmasse kribbelnd spüren. Kein Wunder, es ist die Lebensgeschichte eines Verrückten.
 

» Add other authors (35 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Kazuo Ishiguroprimary authorall editionscalculated
Brown, JanePhotographersecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Lee, JohnNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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It was the summer of 1923, the summer I came down from Cambridge, when despite my aunt's wishes that I return to Shropshire, I decided my future lay in the capital and took up a small flat at Number 14b Bedford Gardens in Kensington.
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"England, 1930s. Christopher Banks has become the country's most celebrated detective, his cases the talk of London society. Yet one unsolved crime always haunted him: the mysterious disappearance of his parents, in Old Shanghai, when he was a small boy. Now, as the world lurches towards total war, Banks realizes that the time has come for him to return to the city of his childhood and at last solve the mystery - that only by doing so will civilization be saved from the approaching catastrophe." "Moving between London and Shanghai of the inter-war years, When We Were Orphans is a story of memory, intrigue and the need to return: of a childhood vision of the world surviving deep into adulthood, indelibly shaping and distorting a person's life."--Jacket.

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Privatdetektiven Christopher Banks har opklaret talrige sager i det londonske society. Men der er stadig en sag han ikke har kunnet løse. Under sin opvækst i Shanghai forsvandt hans forældre sporløst. Nu, i slutningen af 1930erne på kanten af 2. verdenskrig, indser Banks at han må tilbage til Østen

The novel is about a British man named Christopher Banks who used to live in the Shanghai of colonial China in the early 1900s, but when his father, an opium businessman, and his mother disappear within an interval of a few weeks, Christopher is sent away to live with his aunt in Britain. Christopher vows to become a detective in order to solve the case of his parents' disappearance, and he achieves this goal through ruthless determination. His fame as a private investigator soon spreads, and in the late 1930s he returns to China to solve the most important case of his life. The impression is given that if he solves this case, a world catastrophe will be averted but it is not apparent how. As Christopher pursues his investigation, the boundaries between fact and fantasy begin to evaporate.
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