NLMG context

Question 1

Dolly the sheep

Answer 1

first successful mammalian cloning

Question 2

5

Answer 2

Age of Ishiguro when he moved from Japan to UK

Question 3

1996

Answer 3

The year the Dolly was successfully cloned.

Question 4

Stem Cell Research

Answer 4

The process of farming cells to construct organs for donation or therapeutic use.

Question 5

Ethics

Answer 5

The branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles.

Question 6

Nagasaki

Answer 6

City where Ishiguro was born in 1954.

Question 7

Dual nationality

Answer 7

Ishiguro has dual nationality of Japan and the UK. Does this allow him to view both cultures from the outside and provide him with a keen observation of what it means to belong?

Question 8

Frankenstein

Answer 8

Novel written in 1818 by Mary Shelley in which the protagonist uses scientific experimentation to create a ‘creature’.

Question 9

Remains of the Day

Answer 9

Novel written by Ishiguro in 1989 based on the memories of the butler of a grand house.

Question 10

Booker Prize

Answer 10

Literary prize awarded annually for the best piece of orginal fiction. Won by Ishiguro for his 1989 novel ‘The Remains of the Day’.

Question 11

The Handmaids Tale

Answer 11

Dystopian Novel by Margaret Attwood in which reproduction is controlled by the state.

Question 12

Jacques Derrida

Answer 12

Philosopher who considered the concept of the Other - the Outsider.

Question 13

2005

Answer 13

Year in which Never Let Me Go was published.

Question 14

March 2005

Answer 14

UN non binding agreement called for a ban on human cloning.

Question 15

Concentration Camps

Answer 15

Places of imprisonment in WW2. Images of barbed wire in Never Let Me Go allude to these.

Question 16

1984

Answer 16

Novel by George Orwell with some similar features to Never Let Me Go: conditioning/brainwashing and obedience.

Question 17

Flashback

Answer 17

A technique which Ishiguro uses throughout his work - notably in The Remains of the Day which is told by a first person unreliable narrator (Stevens) through his memories of the past.

Question 18

Positive consequences of stem cell research

Answer 18

Treatments can be found for life limiting diseases (Cancer, Alzheimers, Motor Neurone disease, Parkinsons).

Question 19

Negative consequences of stem cell research

Answer 19

Who decides when life begins? Who owns an embryo?

Question 20

Edinburgh

Answer 20

Place where Dolly was cloned.

Question 21

Nobel Prize for Literature

Answer 21

Ishiguro won the _______ for his work.

Question 22

Uncanny Valley

Answer 22

human replicas that look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings; causes a response of revulsion among human observers

Question 23

Alternative history conceit

Answer 23

The phrase Ishiguro used to describe his novel being a version of Britain that might have existed by the late twentieth century if science had developed differently.

Question 24

the sadness of the human condition

Answer 24

A phrase Ishiguro uses to describe what the novel is, at its heart, about.

Question 25

The Student’s Novel

Answer 25

What Ishiguro called Never Let Me Go when he began writing it in 1990, imagining a group of strange students living in the countryside.