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
More about the Author

Share the book

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”.

Book Club Kit


Content needs adding in Book Club Kit block, go to edit book > book club kit block and update the content

Find out more

The Remains Of The Day

Kazuo Ishiguro

Download

Author recommends

    The Fortnight In September

    By R. C. Sherriff

    Recommended by: Kazuo Ishiguro
    Publish Date: 1931
    ‘The story was a simple one: a small suburban family on their annual fortnight’s holiday at Bognor. … It was a day-by-day account of their holiday from their last evening at home until the day they packed their bags for…
  • Crime And Punishment

    By Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    Recommended by: Kazuo Ishiguro
    Publish Date: 1866
    Raskolnikov is a former student living in poverty, who, prompted by utilitarian morality and the belief that expectional individuals are not bound by the same moral code as everyone else, decides to commit a random murder. Despite the lack of…
  • Love In A Cold Climate

    By Nancy Mitford

    Recommended by: Kazuo Ishiguro
    Publish Date: 1949
    This book is the sequel to The Pursuit of Love (1945). Groomed to be married in high society by her mother, Lady Leopoldina ‘Polly’ Hampton is expected to embark on a successful season as a debutante in London. However, she…
  • Mr Wilder And Me

    By Jonathan Coe

    Recommended by: Kazuo Ishiguro

    Publish Date: 2020

    Summer 1977. The young Calista leaves Athens and sets off on an adventure which will lead her to a Greek island that has been turned into a film set. Here, she will start working for famed Hollywood director Billy Wilder,…

You might also like these books…

    Wuthering Heights

    By Emily Brontë

    Recommended by: Antoine Laurain & Victoria Hislop
    Publish Date: 1847
    A tale of passion, torment, and revenge, Wuthering Heights is set in the Yorkshire Moors, where a supernatural occurrence will prompt Heathcliff to tell the tragic story of his love for Catherine, her marriage to the well-meaning Edgar, and his…
  • The Fortnight In September

    By R. C. Sherriff

    Recommended by: Kazuo Ishiguro
    Publish Date: 1931
    ‘The story was a simple one: a small suburban family on their annual fortnight’s holiday at Bognor. … It was a day-by-day account of their holiday from their last evening at home until the day they packed their bags for…
  • Wide Sargasso Sea

    By Jean Rhys

    Recommended by: Maggie O’Farrell
    Publish Date: 1966
    The novel tells the story of Antoinette Mason, the woman known as Bertha in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, from her childhood to her arranged marriage to Mr. Rochester, an English gentleman who will turn out to be abusive and cruel.…
  • Missing Person

    By Patrick Modiano

    Recommended by: Antoine Laurain
    Publish Date: 1978 Awards: 1978 Prix Goncourt
    Paris, 1965. Guy Roland, a private detective who lost his memory ten years before, sets off to uncover the truth about his past. As he seeks to find out who he is, he gathers clues which will lead him to…
  • The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd

    By Agatha Christie

    Recommended by: Anthony Horowitz
    Publish Date: 1926
    Christie’s first resounding success, The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd sees the eccentric Belgian detective Hercule Poirot investigate the murder of Roger Ackroyd, a man who knew too much about the woman he loved…