Classic Twists: Never Let Me Go

The idea came to Kazuo Ishiguro when he was contemplating the nuclear bomb. What would the 20th century have looked like, he wondered, "if the incredible developments that took place in nuclear physics, culminating in the creation of the atom and hydrogen bombs, had taken place instead in the field of biology, specifically in cloning." The result of his questions is Never Let Me Go, a beguiling masterpiece of science fiction horror, in which children at an elite boarding school in the 1990s begin to realize that they aren't quite like other children. In this instalment of "Classic Twists," host Rebecca Panovka, along with Joyce Carol Oates and Jane Hu, explores the mysteries of this most fragile and ambiguous of Ishiguro's novels.

ABOUT THIS EVENT'S GUESTS:

Joyce Carol Oates is the author of over sixty novels, including Them, Black Water, What I Lived For, Blonde, and most recently Fox, along with a number of plays and novellas, and volumes of short stories, poems and non-fiction. The winner of the National Book Award, two O. Henry Awards, and the National Humanities Medal, she is the Roger S. Berlind '52 Professor Emerita in the Humanities with the Program in Creative Writing at Princeton University.

Jane Hu is a literary critic whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and Harper’s. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of Southern California.

Rebecca Panovka is a founder and editor of The Drift, a magazine of literature, culture, and politics. Her debut novel, Archival Research, is forthcoming from Norton.

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This event is made possible in part from a gift from the Ann Thoburn Fund.

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