Kazuo Ishiguro OBE (Japanese: カズオ・イシグロ (Kazuo Ishiguro) or 石黒 一雄 (Ishiguro Kazuo); born 8 November 1954) is a Japanese–English novelist. He was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and his family moved to England in 1960. Ishiguro obtained his Bachelor's degree from University of Kent in 1978 and his Master's from the University of East Anglia's creative writing course in 1980. He became a British citizen in 1982.

Ishiguro is one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors in the English-speaking world, having received four Man Booker Prize nominations, including winning the 1989 prize for his novel The Remains of the Day. In 2008, The Times named Ishiguro among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

The Unconsoled (1995) is a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Cheltenham Prize. It is about Ryder, a famous pianist who arrives in a central European city to perform a concert. However, he appears to have lost most of his memory and finds his new environment surreal and dreamlike. He struggles to fulfill his commitments before Thursday night's performance.

Considered distinct from his other works, The Unconsoled was described as a "sprawling, almost indecipherable 500-page work"[1] that "left readers and reviewers baffled".[2] It received strong negative reviews with a few positive ones. Literary critic James Wood said that the novel had "invented its own category of badness".

The novel takes place over a period of three days.