The Hailsham canon of literature and art in Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go” (2005)

Unlike their fellow clones raised elsewhere, the "students" at the Hailsham school in Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" (2005) are educated in the history of English and European literature and art. Along with the painter Pablo Picasso, the writers the narrator Kathy H mentions include William Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Franz Kafka (and two still alive today, Edna O'Brien and Margaret Drabble). Yet Hailsham's jam-packed literary and artistic canon for its cloned organ donors does not include any writers with non-European backgrounds. Perhaps novels by Nella Larsen or Zora Neale Hurston would give the clone underclass ideas about overturning the social order they are raised in. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 30 April 2024)