Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm happy to have as my guest, Casual Ishiguro, whose sixth novel, Never Let Me Go, has recently been published by Knopf.

The first five books,

including several favorite books of mine,

are a pale view of hills,

an artist of the floating world,

The Remains of the Day,

The Unconsoled, and When We Were Orphins.

Now, it seems to me that the Unconsoled and When We Were Orphans. Now, it seems to me that the Unconsoled was a huge breakthrough novel, or at least it was

for me.

Its strangeness seemed to be enormously enunciative.

And the two novels that follow it seem almost as if they are made way for

by the authoritative strangenesses of the unconsoled.

Yeah, you could say that. I mean, looking back, I do feel that without the Unconsult,

you know, my career as a writer would have gone in a different direction altogether. It's not

so much that the current book, the latest book and the one before, are extensions of what I was doing in the Unconsult.

But I think those last two books have been written in the knowledge that, you know, if I wanted

...