From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes this stunning work of soaring imagination.   Born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own, painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition-and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him. Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one’s past. "Swift, compelling, moving, irresistible." -- The Baltimore Sun "Goes much further than even The Remains of the Day in its examination of the roles we've had handed to us... His fullest achievement yet." -- The New York Times Book Review "You seldom read a novel that so convinces you it is extending the possibilities of fiction." -- Sunday Times (London) "Poignant... When We Were Orphans may well be Ishiguro's most capacious book so far." --Pico Iyer, The New York Review of Books "[A]n imaginative work of surpassing intelligence and taste." --Joyce Carol Oates, Times Literary Supplement "With his characteristic finesse, Mr. Ishiguro infuses what seems like a classic adventure story with an ineffable tinge of strangeness." -- The Wall Street Journal From the Booker Prize-winning, bestselling author of Remains of the Day comes this stunning work of soaring imagination. Born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own, painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition-and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him. Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one?s past. From the Booker Prize-winning, bestselling author of Remains of the Day" comes this stunning work of soaring imagination. Born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own, painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition-and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him. Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans" offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one's past. Kazuo Ishiguro  is the 2017 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. His work has been translated into more than 40 languages. Both  The Remains of the Day  and  Never Let Me Go  have sold more than 1 million copies, and both were adapted into highly acclaimed films. Ishiguro's other work includes  The Buried Giant,   Nocturnes, A Pale View of the Hills,  and  An Artist of the Floating World . Chapter One It was the summer of 1923, the summer I came down from Cambridge, when despite my aunt's wishes that I return to Shropshire, I decided my future lay in the capital and took up a small flat at Number 14b Bedford Gardens in Kensington. I remember it now as the most wonderful of summers. After years of being surrounded by fellows, both at school and at Cambridge, I took great pleasure in my own company. I enjoyed the London parks, the quiet of the Reading Room at the British Museum; I indulged entire afternoons strolling the streets of Kensington, outlining to myself plans for my future, pausing once in a while to admire how here in England, even in the midst of such a great city, creepers and ivy are to be found clinging to the fronts of fine houses. It was on one such leisurely walk that I encountered quite by chance an old schoolfriend, James Osbourne, and discovering him to be a neighbour, suggested he call on me when he was next passing. Although