Following last year’s controversial decision to honour American singer Bob Dylan, the Nobel Prize for Literature returned to safer ground for the 2017 award, selecting an artist who is both popular, but critically, a hugely acclaimed literary figure, the British author Kazuo Ishiguro. The writer, best known for The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go received a cheque for 9 million SEK, approximately £836,000.
The author total the Guardian, ‘It was completely not something I expected, otherwise I would have washed my hair this morning. It was absolute chaos. My agent phoned to say it sounded like they had just announced me as the Nobel winner, but there’s so much fake news about these days it’s hard to know who or what to believe so I didn’t really believe it until journalists started calling and lining up outside my door.’