Story highlights Ishiguro says it will take a while for the honor to sink in

Prominent themes: memory, time and self-delusion

(CNN) The 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to British writer Kazuo Ishiguro, whose best-known novels include "The Remains of the Day" and "Never Let Me Go."

Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said Ishiguro is a writer "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world."

Ishiguro, whose family moved to Britain from Japan when he was 5 years old, has written eight books, the most recent of which, "The Buried Giant," was published in 2015.

His third novel, "The Remains of the Day," published in 1989, won Ishiguro a Booker prize and world renown. In 1993, it was turned into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Anthony Hopkins as the duty-obsessed butler, Stevens.

BREAKING NEWS The 2017 #NobelPrize in Literature is awarded to the English author Kazuo Ishiguro pic.twitter.com/j9kYaeMZH6 — The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 5, 2017

"Never Let Me Go" is a dystopian work which introduces an undercurrent of science fiction into his oeuvre with an exploration of issues around human clones.

Read More