Book Reviews - Review 362

Just how short can a book be that readers will part with £5 for it? My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs is the text of Kazuo Ishiguro's Nobel Literature Prize acceptance speech, and comes in at just 36 small pages.

It's a good speech, characterised by the restraint and decency that are hallmarks of Ishiguro's persona. He describes his youth in southern England as the son of Japanese immigrants, and the processes of writing his first few novels, before musing gloomily on the state of the world.

However, I assume there is no information in this text that isn't repeated from press interviews, and if I, a slow reader, could get through it in half an hour, it hardly represents great value for money. Possibly published to fulfil contractual obligations?