Kazuo Ishiguro, the Japan-born British novelist, has already won most of the internationally recognized literary awards: the Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, and, of course, one film adaptation starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson and another with Keira Knightley. So it stands to reason that the only British honor left for him was a little more grand.
On Thursday, Prince Charles knighted Ishiguro at an investiture ceremony that also honored Richard Leman, a former field hockey player; Rebecca Pogson-Hughes-Emanuel, an engineer who raises money for charity; and Dr. Sadhu Ram Gupta, an ophthalmologist. Per the Daily Mail, after the investiture ceremony, Ishiguro said of his knighthood, “It is all part of my story of coming from a different country and growing up in this country.” He added, “It is part of my big love affair with Britain and British culture.”
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Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954, but immigrated to the United Kingdom before his sixth birthday. Many of his novels are set in England, including The Remains of the Day, which tells the story of a butler working at a British estate. He told the Irish Times that his late parents would likely feel vindicated if they could have known about his knighthood.
It’s not the first time that Ishiguro has spent time with the Prince of Wales, according to the Daily Mail. In 2015, he told an audience in Scotland about his youthful time working at Balmoral as a grouse beater, an assistant who tries to corral the birds during hunts. “It was all a bit scary, to be honest,” he said. “The aristocrats would fire away with their guns, and it was lucky if you did not get shot yourself.”
His wife and daughter also joined him at the ceremony, which took place at Buckingham Palace.
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