Books

Fiction
Historical
Audiobook

Books like The Buried Giant

The Buried Giant

2015, Kazuo Ishiguro

3.4/5

The Buried Giant is a fantasy novel by the Nobel Prize-winning British writer Kazuo Ishiguro, published in March 2015.

The novel follows an elderly Briton couple, Axl and Beatrice, living in a fictional post-Arthurian 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 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.

Following the death of King Arthur, Saxons and Britons 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.

Similar Books

If you like The Buried Giant, you might also like: The Lacuna, The Known World, and The Marriage Plot