The Remains Of The Day

By Kazuo Ishiguro

This book is a brilliant portrait of an ageing English butler and his fading, insular world in post-war Britain. An evocative and beautiful story of life and lost love in one of the great country houses between the wars…

~ Her Majesty Queen Camilla

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Featured in: Season 3

Publish Date: 1989 Awards: 1989 Booker Prize for Fiction

Stevens is an English butler who spent his life to the service of the recently deceased Lord Darlington. Encouraged to take a well-earned vacation, he decides to visit Miss Kenton, the former housekeeper at Darlington Hall. During the journey, he ponders about his former master, a Nazi sympathiser undeserving of his unflinching loyalty, his late father, and Miss Kenton herself, to whom he never admitted his true feelings. Stevens is left musing over missed opportunities, but a stranger encourages him to stop dwelling on the past and embrace “the remains of the day”.

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On Two Competing Ideas of Dignity

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The Remains Of The Day

Kazuo Ishiguro

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