The Remains of the Day

What Remains of the Day (English Original title: The Remains of the Day ) is a novel by British writer Kazuo Ishiguro from the year 1989 in the same year Ishiguro was awarded for the book with the Booker Prize. .

The novel was made ​​into a film under the same title in 1993, directed by James Ivory, starring Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins in the lead roles.

Content

Stevens, who is set to lock Darlington Hall as Butler, 1956 embarks on the journey to Cornwall, there to visit his former colleague Miss Kenton and ask them to return to Darlington Hall. This trip proved to be a trip to Stevens past. Gradually the memories appear to him in his past life in flashbacks. Before the Second World War, Lord Darlington, who is now deceased, in possession of the vast country estate. There were about 1920 to 1938 partly secret meetings of major European politicians instead. Lord Darlington campaigned for a relaxation of the laid down in the Treaty of Versailles, German reparations after the First World War and was later a representative of the appeasement policy of the British Prime Minister Chamberlain. In the postwar period Darlington was therefore a "Nazi friend," lost a lawsuit against a newspaper that had this strongly asserted and died a broken man.

Stevens never allowed himself to be a loyal and devoted to his master, perfect butler to make the motives of his Lord in question or to perceive its involvement in National Socialism at all. His feelings for Miss Kenton, who loves him and this gives him to understand thoroughly, he can not. He recognizes the potential opportunities that he has to expire unused. At the end of his journey he sees the face of onrushing evening a way that it can only try to make the best of "what remains of the day ".

Reception

" In her analysis of the novel Bettina Steinhage referenced two readings: either as a work which " is concerned with the perception and representation of past and develops the question of the context in which past with the present is " or as a " universal lesson about misguided idealism and the personal tragedy of a man "( 190). Probably true both for: The Remains of the Day is a general character study of distorted perception, but also a historically accurate analysis of the downside highly acclaimed British virtues such as aloofness, discretion, dignity and loyalty. That the Nagasaki native, but early socialized in England Ishiguro involving the reader with a subtle narrative in the interpretation of his characters, makes the real strength of the novel. "

Expenditure

• The Remains of the Day.London 1989. ISBN 0-571-15310-0
• What remains of the day. Übers by Hermann Stiehl. btb Paperback. ISBN 978-3-442-73309-5