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A while back I had the opportunity to interview one of our greatest living novelists—Haruki Murakami. He spoke for about an hour at the midtown offices of his publisher, Random House. At the time, Murakami had just released and was promoting his fourteenth book, After Dark. We didn’t meet to discuss the novel, though. Instead we talked about the transcendent possibilities of great fiction. When I asked him about his favorite book of the past fifty years, here’s how he responded.

[#image: /photos/5582927ae52bc4b477a99a46]|||Never Let Me Go.jpg||| My favorite book of the past fifty years is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I read all of Ishiguro’s books, every book he publishes I read. It’s a routine. But Never Let Me Go is my favorite. It tells the story of three children who grow up sheltered from the rest of society at a boarding school in the English countryside. I don’t want to talk too much about the plot, but I will say that it’s a very sad story. And a prophetic story.

I had lunch with Ishiguro several years ago. He told me that he was almost finished with a new book. He wouldn’t tell me the title, though. We talked mostly about music. He likes jazz very much, and so do I. And he asked me if I know of any good Japanese jazz musicians. I said, ’Yeah, I know somebody. I’ll bring the CD to your hotel. And I brought the disc, which was called "Never Let Me Go." I guess it was a coincidence.

I was living in Cambridge [England] when Never Let Me Go was published. I read the book in English, which is my second language. It took me four or five days because I had to read it very carefully. But if it had been written in Japanese I would have read it in a single sitting. This book carried me somewhere else. A good book can do that. It’s a physical feeling, like I was squeezed by some force. It’s a feeling I love. When I was a kid, I was moved so many times. When you grow old, those occasions become rare. But this book gave me that feeling. It’s a physical feeling. I love the feeling. It also gave me the feeling of being isolated. Your soul, your mind should be isolated sometimes. You need that. I need that. And I get that from this book. It’s serene, it’s beautiful, and it’s scary.