Novelist Sir Kazuo Ishiguro to be awarded Bodley Medal

Sir Kazuo will receive Bodleian Libraries' highest honour on 3 April 2019 at the Oxford Literary Festival.

3 December 2018

The Bodleian Libraries will present novelist Sir Kazuo Ishiguro with the Bodley Medal, the Libraries' highest honour. Sir Kazuo will receive the award at the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival on 3 April 2019, when he will deliver the annual Bodley Lecture.

Sir Kazuo is an award-winning British novelist, screenwriter, short story writer and songwriter. He is widely considered one of the greatest contemporary fiction authors in the English-speaking world.

He was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of five. His eight works of fiction have earned him many awards and honours around the world, including the Nobel Prize in Literature (2017) and the Booker Prize (1989). His work has been translated into more than 50 languages. His novels The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go were made into acclaimed films. Sir Kazuo was given a Knighthood for Services to Literature in 2018, and also holds the French decoration, Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and the Japanese decoration, Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star.

The Bodley Medal is awarded by the University of Oxford's Bodleian Libraries to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the worlds in which the Bodleian is active including literature, culture, science and communication. Past winners include biographer Claire Tomalin, novelist and screenwriter William Boyd, classicist Mary Beard, physicist Stephen Hawking, film director Nicholas Hytner, novelist Hilary Mantel, the late poet Seamus Heaney, writer and actor Alan Bennett and inventor of the World Wide Web Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Sir Kazuo will appear in conversation with Richard Ovenden, Bodley's Librarian, at 6pm on 3 April 2019, at the University of Oxford's Sheldonian Theatre, as part of the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival. Following the event, Ovenden will present him with the Bodley Medal.

The Bodleian Libraries is a cultural partner of the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival, which runs from Saturday 30 March to Sunday 7 April 2019. Events will take place at the Bodleian's Weston Library and Divinity School as well as at venues across the city. For more information, and to book tickets for the Bodley Lecture, please visit the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival.