Azure

Beneath the expanse of the blue skies,
The fly catches my fancy

An artist of the floating world

The name is love at first read. Though the book is not as fantastical or tempestuous as what the name promises, being set in a Japan, fresh from the war but still strongly tied and held back by its formal traditions. The book patiently follows the desultory reminiscings of an artist, trying to make his peace with his life, work and beliefs in a drastically altered world. It is a very interesting commentary on how the final outcome of an event changes social perceptions and replaces prejudices. Of how beliefs and ideologies of people, however rational and free thinking, are primarily determined by the social environment at the time. Of how depending on time and circumstance, people very similar in intellect and reasoning can find themselves in opposite courts. Of the basis of the generation gap. Of how time can subvert the validity of choices.

The calmness of the book, much like that of its characters belies the turbulence, quietly but strongly sheathed in. The book is also able to lead an outsider in into the lives of its characters, in a world, clothed in its intricate conventions and very distant from our own, without their actions all becoming incongruous. It opened up to me a part of the history of a country I barely knew apart from the notion that it has the coolest and craziest people in the world. I am also amazed of how Ishiguro keeps track of the character he reveals admist the almost compulsively tangential thoughts of his character.