The Nobel Prize in Literature is given in recognition of a writer’s entire body of work rather than a single title. Winners have included international literary giants like Saul Bellow, Ernest Hemingway, Gabriel García Márquez and Toni Morrison. In other years, the academy has selected obscure European writers whose work was not widely read in English, including the French novelist J. M. G. Le Clézio (2008), the Romanian-German writer Herta Müller (2009), the Swedish poet and translator Tomas Transtromer (2011) and the French novelist Patrick Modiano (2014).

Of the 114 winners who have received the prize since it was first awarded in 1901, 14 have been women.

Recently, the academy has often overlooked novelists and poets in favor of writers working in unconventional forms. Last year, the prize went to the singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” a choice that infuriated some traditionalists. In 2015, the Nobel went to the Belarusian journalist and prose writer Svetlana Alexievich, who is known for her expansive oral histories, and in 2013, the Canadian short story writer Alice Munro won.

Mr. Ishiguro, the 29th English-language novelist to win the prize, stands out from some previous choices for his accessible prose style. In a rarity for writers, Mr. Ishiguro is beloved by critics and scholars and is commercially successful; his work is widely known and read, and has been adapted into feature films, and a television series in Japan. His novels have collectively sold more than 2.5 million copies in the United States.

“He’s got such an extraordinary range, and he writes with such restraint and control about some very big themes, about memory and the loss thereof, about war and love” said Sonny Mehta, the chairman and editor in chief of Alfred A. Knopf, who has worked with Mr. Ishiguro since his 1989 novel “The Remains of the Day.”

In an telephone interview on Thursday, Mr. Ishiguro, sounding flustered and stunned, said he was sitting at his kitchen table writing an email in his London home, where he lives with his wife Lorna, when the phone rang. It was his agent, who told him that the Nobel committee had announced his name. Then the BBC called, and a gaggle of journalists and photographers gathered in front of his door. “It was very embarrassing,” he said. “My neighbors probably thought I was a serial killer or something.”

Mr. Ishiguro seems to be in a prolific phase: He said he’s working on a new novel, and has several film adaptations of his books in the works, as well as a couple of theater projects.