Reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
Reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go: The Alternative Dystopian Imagination aims to offer innovative perspectives for the analysis of Nobel-prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s oeuvre through a focus on the genre of science fiction, particularly the novel Never Let Me Go (2005). The study proposes the term "intimate dystopia" to reflect on the passage from totalitarian or external oppressive forces to more "subtle" systems of power. Its interdisciplinary approach combines, apart from literary theory on different genres such as science fiction and memory, race studies, feminism and ecocriticism. It is based on an exhaustive critical and textual analysis that allows for a thorough and nuanced understanding of Ishiguro’s multi-layered novel, covering themes such as the ethical dimensions and gender implications of caregiving, the dystopian portrayal of the environment, the significance of art in the existence of marginalized groups and the genre-related complexities of the text.
Eva Pelayo Sañudo holds a PhD in gender and diversity from the University of Oviedo and currently teaches at the University of Cantabria (Spain). Her fields of research are American literature, ethnic, gender and postcolonial studies. Her monography Spatialities in Italian American Women’s Literature: Beyond the Mean Streets (2021) has been awarded several prizes.