Kazuo Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day, The Tabernacle

Forget Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs: as far as anatomies of the twentieth century’s crumbling class systems go, The Remains of the Day has them well and truly beat. Adapted into a critically lauded film in 1993 and itself the recipient of the 1989 Man Booker Prize, Kazuo Ishiguro’s best-known novel delves into the memories of reserved butler Stevens as he travels to visit the woman he came closest to loving. Stretching through and beyond the inter-war period and tackling the appeasement policies of the era, it is a superb account of deference, self-sacrifice and restraint against the background of great social and political change.

As part of the Guardian Review’s Book Club series, Ishiguro will discuss the novel with critic John Mullan in Notting Hill’s delightful Tabernacle. Expect an exploration of the Japanese-born novelist’s engagement with British society, his mastery of the first-person voice and his interest in ambiguity and inaction - and, just maybe, news of the upcoming The Buried Giant (2015), his first novel in a decade.