''The Buried Giant'' is a
fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy ...
novel by the
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
-winning British writer
Kazuo Ishiguro
Sir Kazuo Ishiguro ( ; born 8 November 1954) is a British novelist, screenwriter, musician, and short-story writer. Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and moved to Britain in 1960 with his parents when he was five.
He is one of the most cr ...
, published in March 2015.
The novel follows an elderly
Briton
British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.: British nationality law governs mo ...
couple, Axl and Beatrice, living in a fictional post-
Arthurian
King Arthur ( cy, Brenin Arthur, kw, Arthur Gernow, br, Roue Arzhur) is a Legend, legendary king of Great Britain, Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.
In the earliest tradition ...
England in which no-one is able to retain long-term memories. After dimly recalling that they might years earlier have had a son, the couple decide to travel to a neighbouring village to seek him out.
The book was nominated for the 2016
World Fantasy Award
The World Fantasy Awards are a set of awards given each year for the best fantasy literature, fantasy fiction published during the previous calendar year. Organized and overseen by the World Fantasy Convention, the awards are given each year a ...
for best novel, and the 2016
Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature. It was also placed sixth in the 2016
Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel The Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel is a literary award given annually by ''Locus Magazine'' as part of their Locus Awards.
Winners
References
External links
The Locus Award Index: FantasyThe Locus Award: 2011 winnersExcerpts and summaries o ...
.
Plot summary
Following the death of
King Arthur
King Arthur ( cy, Brenin Arthur, kw, Arthur Gernow, br, Roue Arzhur) is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.
In the earliest traditions, Arthur appears as a ...
,
Saxons
The Saxons ( la, Saxones, german: Sachsen, ang, Seaxan, osx, Sahson, nds, Sassen, nl, Saksen) were a group of Germanic
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peoples whose name was given in the early Middle Ages to a large country (Old Saxony, la, Saxonia) near the Nor ...
and
Britons
British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies.: British nationality law governs mo ...
live in harmony. Along with everyone else in their community, Axl and Beatrice, an elderly Briton couple, suffer from severe selective amnesia that they call the 'mist'. Although barely able to remember, they feel sure that they once had a son, and they decide to travel to a village several days' walk away to seek him out. They stay at a Saxon village where two ogres have dragged off a boy named Edwin. A visiting Saxon warrior, Wistan, kills the ogres and rescues Edwin who is discovered to have a wound, believed to be an ogre-bite. The superstitious villagers attempt to kill the boy, but Wistan rescues him and joins Axl and Beatrice on their journey, hoping to leave Edwin at the son's village.
The group heads to a monastery to consult with Jonus, a wise monk, about a pain in Beatrice's side. They meet the elderly
Sir Gawain
Gawain (), also known in many other forms and spellings, is a character in Arthurian legend, in which he is King Arthur's nephew and a Knight of the Round Table. The prototype of Gawain is mentioned under the name Gwalchmei in the earliest W ...
, nephew of
King Arthur
King Arthur ( cy, Brenin Arthur, kw, Arthur Gernow, br, Roue Arzhur) is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain.
In the earliest traditions, Arthur appears as a ...
, who – as is well known – was tasked decades ago with slaying the she-dragon Querig, but who has never succeeded. Wistan reveals that he was sent by the Saxon king to slay Querig out of concern that she would be used by Lord Brennus, king of the Britons, to kill Saxons. The travellers are treated with hospitality at the monastery, but are informed by Jonus that most of the monks are corrupt. Sir Gawain has spoken to the abbot, believing he will protect the four. Instead, the abbot informs Lord Brennus, who sends soldiers to murder them. As an experienced warrior, Wistan realises that the monastery was originally built as a fort, and he makes use of its structure to trap and kill the soldiers.
Sir Gawain, riding on alone, recalls how, years earlier, King Arthur had ordered the extermination of many Saxon villages. The massacre had been a betrayal of the peace treaties brokered by Axl, who had at the time been Arthur's envoy (although he has now forgotten it). Arthur also ordered that Querig be brought to the lair where she now lives, and that a spell be cast, turning her breath into an oblivion-inducing mist, causing the Saxons to forget about the massacres.
Axl and Beatrice become separated from Wistan and Edwin, and they travel on alone. They are persuaded by a girl to take a poisoned goat to Querig's lair. Sir Gawain joins them and shows the way. Travelling with Wistan, Edwin has been hearing a voice that he identifies as his lost mother, calling him to her. Wistan realises that Edwin's wound has been caused by a baby dragon, and that Edwin can lead him to Querig. As they approach, Edwin becomes increasingly crazed and has to be restrained.
Sir Gawain reveals that his duty was not in fact to slay Querig, but to protect her in order to maintain the mist. Wistan challenges Gawain to a duel and kills him. He proceeds to slay Querig, causing Edwin's madness to depart and the mist to dissipate, restoring the people's memories. He declares that "the giant, once well buried, now stirs": his action will cause the old animosities between Saxon and Briton to return, leading to a new war.
Axl and Beatrice are finally able to recall that their son had died many years ago of the plague. They meet a ferryman who offers to row the old couple over to an island where they can be close to him in perpetuity. Normally, he says, married couples have to dwell on the island separately and always apart, but in rare cases couples whose love is deep and profound may remain together. The ferryman tells Axl and Beatrice that they qualify, but as they are about to be rowed over, the waves increase and he informs them that he can carry only one person at a time. Axl is suspicious that the ferryman intends to trick them into separating forever, but Beatrice believes the man to be truthful and asks Axl to wait on the shore while she is taken over. Axl reluctantly agrees.
Background
''The Buried Giant'' took ten years to write, longer than Ishiguro had anticipated. Speaking at the Cheltenham Book Festival in 2014, he recalled that his wife, Lorna MacDougall, had rejected an early draft of the book, saying "this won't do ... there's no way you can carry on with this, you'll have to start again from the beginning".
Ishiguro added that, at the time, he had been surprised by her comments because he had been pleased with his progress so far.
He shelved the novel and wrote a short story collection, ''
Nocturnes
A nocturne is a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night.
History
The term ''nocturne'' (from French ''nocturne'' 'of the night') was first applied to musical pieces in the 18th century, when it indicated an ensemble ...
'' (2009).
It was six years before Ishiguro returned to ''The Buried Giant'', and, following his wife's advice, he proceeded to "start from scratch and rebuild it from the beginning".
Ishiguro's inspiration for ''The Buried Giant'' came from the Dark Ages in Britain. He told the ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' that he had wanted to write about
collective memory
Collective memory refers to the shared pool of memories, knowledge and information of a social group that is significantly associated with the group's identity. The English phrase "collective memory" and the equivalent French phrase "la mémoire c ...
and the way warrior societies cope with traumatic events by forgetting. He ruled out modern historic settings because they would be too realistic and interpreted too literally. The Dark Ages setting solved Ishiguro's problem: "this kind of barren, weird England, with no civilization ... could be quite interesting".
He proceeded to research life in England around that time, and discovered, "
my delight ... nobody knows what the hell was going on. It's a blank period of British history".
Ishiguro filled in the blanks himself, creating the novel's fantasy setting. For the book's title, he sought his wife's help. After many discarded ideas they found it near the end of the novel's text. Ishiguro explained, "The giant well buried is now beginning to stir. And when it wakes up, there's going to be mayhem".
Reception
''The Buried Giant'' received generally positive reviews. In ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
,'' British author and journalist
Alex Preston wrote:
Focusing on one single reading of its story of mists and monsters, swords and sorcery, reduces it to mere parable; it is much more than that. It is a profound examination of memory and guilt, of the way we recall past trauma en masse. It is also an extraordinarily atmospheric and compulsively readable tale, to be devoured in a single gulp. ''The Buried Giant'' is ''Game of Thrones
''Game of Thrones'' is an American fantasy drama television series created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss for HBO. It is an adaptation of ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', a series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, the first ...
'' with a conscience, '' The Sword in the Stone'' for the age of the trauma industry, a beautiful, heartbreaking book about the duty to remember and the urge to forget.
Not all critics praised the novel, however.
James Wood in ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' criticized the work, saying that "Ishiguro is always breaking his own rules, and fudging limited but conveniently lucid recollections."
Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the '' Earthsea'' fantasy series. She was ...
criticized the novel for its treatment of the fantasy genre. She wrote:
I respect what I think he was trying to do, but for me it didn't work. It couldn't work. No writer can successfully use the 'surface elements' of a literary genre — far less its profound capacities — for a serious purpose, while despising it to the point of fearing identification with it. I found reading the book painful. It was like watching a man falling from a high wire while he shouts to the audience, "Are they going say I'm a tight-rope walker?"
Ishiguro responded to Le Guin's comments, saying "Le Guin's entitled to like my book or not like my book, but as far as I am concerned, she's got the wrong person. I am on the side of the pixies and the dragons." Le Guin in turn responded, writing, in part, "I am delighted to let Mr Ishiguro make his own case, and to say I am sorry for anything that was hurtful in my evidently over-hasty response to his question 'Will they think this is fantasy?'"
Audiobook
In 2015
Penguin Random House
Penguin Random House LLC is an Anglo-American multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, from the merger of Penguin Group and Random House.
On April 2, 2020, Bertels ...
released an audiobook version of the novel, read by
David Horovitch
David Horovitch (born 11 August 1945) is an English actor, perhaps best known for playing the character of Inspector Slack in ''Miss Marple''. He stars in the '' Game of Thrones'' prequel series ''House of the Dragon'' as Grand Maester Mellos.
...
.
Translations
The book has been translated into French, German, Spanish and Italian as ''Le géant enfoui'', ''Der begrabene Riese'', ''El gigante enterrado'' and ''Il gigante sepolto'' respectively.
References
Works cited
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Buried Giant
2015 British novels
2015 fantasy novels
Modern Arthurian fiction
Faber and Faber books
Random House books
Novels by Kazuo Ishiguro