Kazuo Ishiguro: I’m not the kind of writer who directly reveals something about myself autobiographically through an alter ego character. I think you’ll struggle to find any character who is kind of like me in real life. But my books, those novels are me. I express myself through those novels as a whole, not through any single character. The emotions I try and express, the perspectives I try and present, I feel that they’re who I am. What I’m trying to say is, “This is how I feel about life. I presented you with a story about a certain area of our experience, and these are the feelings I have about it. Isn’t it the case? Don’t you feel that too?” And that’s not a rhetorical question. I’m actually really asking that. I’m saying, “Is it just me, or do you feel this too? Do we have a point of connection here? Because it strikes me it’s like this.” Sometimes I’m trying to access — not obvious emotions sometimes— nuanced or emotions that perhaps people haven’t been aware of having, but it’s been a large part of them. I feel that’s what I try to do in my books. Obviously, there’s an element of novels — because they use words that contain argument ,or that represent a piece of history about the real world out there — but essentially I’m a writer of fiction. I’m not an essayist. I’m not a historian. I write fiction, which means I’m trying to connect with people through feelings. I’m trying to appeal to that thing which we all have as human beings. Never mind the different borders and walls we erect.