The Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel by 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Kazuo Ishiguro
From A to Z the Penguin Drop Caps series collects 26 unique hardcovers-featuring cover art by
Jessica Hische It all begins with a letter. Fall in love with Penguin Drop Caps a new series
of twenty-six collectible and hardcover editions each with a type cover showcasing a
gorgeously illustrated letter of the alphabet. In a design collaboration between Jessica Hische
and Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley the series features unique cover art by Hische a
superstar in the world of type design and illustration whose work has appeared everywhere from
Tiffany & Co. to Wes Anderson's recent film Moonrise Kingdom to Penguin's own bestsellers
Committed and Rules of Civility. With exclusive designs that have never before appeared on
Hische's hugely popular Daily Drop Cap blog the Penguin Drop Caps series launches with six
perennial favorites to give as elegant gifts or to showcase on your own shelves. I is for
Ishiguro. Masuji Ono saw misery in his homeland and became unwilling to spend his skills solely
in the celebration of physical beauty. Instead he envisioned a strong and powerful nation of
the future and he put his painting to work in the service of the movement that led Japan into
World War II. Now as the mature Masuji Ono struggles through the spiritual wreckage of that
war his memories of the floating world of his youth full of pleasure and promise serve as an
escape from a punishment for-and a justification of-his entire life. Drifting without honor in
Japan's postwar society which indicts him for its defeat and reviles him for his aesthetics
he relives the passage through his personal history that makes him both a hero and a coward but
above all a human being. An Artist of the Floating World is a sensual and profoundly
convincing portrait of the artist as an aging man. At once a multigenerational tale and a
samurai death poem written in English it is also a saga of the clash of the old and new orders
blending classical and contemporary iconography with compassion and wit.
