Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills is headed to the big screen, Deadline reports.
Ishiguro’s first novel, published in 1982, follows Etsuko, a Japanese woman living in the U.K., reeling from the suicide of her daughter, and thinking back to her life in post-World War II Nagasaki. A critic for Kirkus called the novel “evocative but oppressively unfocused fiction.”
The film is being developed by the production companies Bunbuku and Number 9 Films. Kei Ishikawa (A Man) will write and direct, with Ishiguro on board as an executive producer, and Suzu Hirose (A Morning of Farewell) set to star.
Ishiguro’s novels The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, have previously been adapted into films, and two of his other novels, The Buried Giant and Klara and the Sun, are both in the works as movies.
Ishiguro told Deadline that he is “a great admirer” of director Ishikawa.
“He has a masterly command over the language of cinema and draws superbly nuanced performances from his actors,” he said. “His fine screenplay, which I’ve read with fascination, is mysterious and moving. The story itself concerns the yearnings, hopes and fears of the generation that emerged in a rapidly changing Japan after the horrors of World War II and the atomic bombings. How appropriate, then, that our movie will be released as we mark the 80th anniversary of the end of those terrible events whose shadows continue to fall over us all today.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
