Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro: Cloning, Free Will, and Soulmates
2/24/20261 hr 3 min
What inspired Kazuo Ishiguro’s timeless story about mortality, growing up, and the human condition? How are its characters so relatable, and yet entirely unique? And, why does the dark secret at its heart challenge scientific innovation?
Join Dominic Sandbrook and Tabitha Syrett as they delve into the story behind Kazuo Ishiguro's literary masterpiece, the context in which it was written, and the wonderful story itself.
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First 90 secondsTabitha Syrett· Host0:00
[upbeat classical music] "My name is Kathy H. I'm thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year. That'll make it almost exactly twelve years. Now, I know my being a carer so long isn't necessarily because they think I'm fantastic at what I do. There are some really good carers who've been told to stop after just two or three years. And I can think of one carer at least who went on for all of fourteen years despite being a complete waste of space. So I'm not trying to boast. But then I do know for a fact that they've been pleased with my work and by and large, I have too. My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. Their recovery times have been impressive, and hardly any of them have been classified as agitated, even before fourth donation." Okay, maybe I am boasting now. So hello, Dominic. Hello, everybody. That was our narrator, Kathy H, kicking us off in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go, published in two thousand and five. And you can tell from that opening reading alone that Kathy, as our narrator, has a very distinctive voice. Oddly banal. It's very specific. It's