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.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblad, and today,

my guest is Cashew-Ishiguro.

It's the occasion of his fifth novel

when we were orphans,

and it's with a great and anticipation that I look forward to having Ishiguro as a guest, because to my mind he's one of the few writers who is pioneering narrative possibilities

that go beyond the ones that have previously existed in the novel,

while refining certain of those that have always existed. The pleasure of these books is that while

as original as they can be, they provide pleasure. They are not designed to elude one's

interests, but rather to incite it.

So let's start.

The book is called When We Were Orphins.

And I wanted to begin by asking you how, why the methodology of detection and the tones of Edwardian detective fiction, late Edwardian, seemed useful to you?

Well, the detective stuff was a starting point.

I'm not sure how central to the whole scheme of the novel the detective thing

ended up in the end, but it was for me an important starting point. I used to read these

Agatha Christie's and Dorothy Sayers, that kind of English, cozy mystery story when I was a kid.

And I've always had a kind of a slightly guilty affection for them long after I came to believe that they were not deep literature.

...