Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day tells the story of Stevens, a middle-aged English butler who has worked at the English estate of Darlington Hall from the 1920s up to 1956, when the novel takes place. The novel describes Stevens’ road trip through the English countryside to visit a former colleague. The trip prompts him to reflect on his past professional and private life, when the nobleman he served got caught up in the political turmoil before World War II.
Summary from Cliff Notes
Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-born British novelist. His novel The Remains of the day, about an English butler coming to realise the extent of his self-sacrifice and self-deception, won the 1989 Booker Prize and was made into a film in 1993. The Nobel Prize in Literature 2017 was awarded to Kazuo Ishiguro "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".