The Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel by 2017 Nobel Prize in
Literature winner, Kazuo Ishiguro
From A to Z, the Penguin Drop Caps series collects 26 unique
hardcovers--featuring cover art by Jessica Hische
It all begins with a letter. Fall in love with Penguin Drop Caps, a new
series of twenty-six collectible and hardcover editions, each with a
type cover showcasing a gorgeously illustrated letter of the alphabet.
In a design collaboration between Jessica Hische and Penguin Art
Director Paul Buckley, the series features unique cover art by Hische, a
superstar in the world of type design and illustration, whose work has
appeared everywhere from Tiffany & Co. to Wes Anderson's recent film
Moonrise Kingdom to Penguin's own bestsellers Committed and Rules
of Civility. With exclusive designs that have never before appeared on
Hische's hugely popular Daily Drop Cap blog, the Penguin Drop Caps
series launches with six perennial favorites to give as elegant gifts,
or to showcase on your own shelves.
I is for Ishiguro. Masuji Ono saw misery in his homeland and became
unwilling to spend his skills solely in the celebration of physical
beauty. Instead, he envisioned a strong and powerful nation of the
future, and he put his painting to work in the service of the movement
that led Japan into World War II. Now, as the mature Masuji Ono
struggles through the spiritual wreckage of that war, his memories of
the "floating world" of his youth, full of pleasure and promise, serve
as an escape from, a punishment for--and a justification of--his entire
life. Drifting without honor in Japan's postwar society, which indicts
him for its defeat and reviles him for his aesthetics, he relives the
passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a
coward but, above all, a human being. An Artist of the Floating World
is a sensual and profoundly convincing portrait of the artist as an
aging man. At once a multigenerational tale and a samurai death poem
written in English, it is also a saga of the clash of the old and new
orders, blending classical and contemporary iconography with compassion
and wit.
