English Literature: Never Let Me Go – Stories And Humans With Dr Bharat Tandon From University of East Anglia

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In this English Literature session, Dr Bharat Tandon, Lecturer in Literature at University of East Anglia, will run an interactive talk for students on Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.

‘Anyway, I’m not making any big claims for myself,’ says the narrator Kathy H; this session will investigate how so many of Kazuo Ishiguro’s larger concerns in Never Let Me Go, and in his fiction more broadly, are focused through what his narrators don’t say, or what they tell us obliquely or accidentally, enabling us to think about the stylistic phenomenon of the ‘unreliable’ narrator. We will connect this to Ishiguro’s ongoing interest in what it means to be human, and his attraction to characters who are slightly apart from humanity – looking back to Stevens the butler in his Booker-Prize-winning novel The Remains of the Day (1989), and forward to the ‘Artificial Friend’ at the heart of his most recent novel Klara and the Sun (2021).

Lecturer Profile: Dr Bharat Tandon is an expert on nineteenth- and twentieth-century writing (he has published on Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, John Keats, and Thomas Hardy, as well as editing Austen’s Emma for Harvard University Press), he has also been writing about contemporary fiction for three decades, for publications such as The Times Literary Supplement and the Daily Telegraph. He was also a judge for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2012, one of the panel that awarded the prize to Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies.

Our events are designed so that a group of students can take part from a classroom or students and teachers can take part as individuals, either from school or from home. There is no charge to take part.

As a live, participative event, this session will not be recorded but slides and other resources will be shared after the event, where available.

Suitable for: Aged 16+ pre-university students studying, or with a possible interest in studying, English Literature and related disciplines. Student groups as well as students and teachers joining individually are very welcome.

Preparation/Pre-Reading: Students may wish to consider the topic in advance and questions they have. Students can also think about questions about studying at university level.

The IT Setup: The event will be run on Zoom and participants will be able to join using laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. If you are joining as a school group, we recommend connecting with one device and projecting on to a whiteboard. You will be able to interact with the speaker via typed comments and questions and/or via a microphone. Full details will be sent to those who have registered (see below) prior to the event.

Booking a Place: This is free for schools and colleges. If you would like to take part in this event, please register your interest using the link to the registration form below:

Register here