#22 in Historical fiction
The Remains of the Day
- 256
- Pages
- about 4.5 h
- Reading time
- Film 1993
- On screen
- Booker Prize
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Our view
Ishiguro builds the whole novel on what his butler cannot bring himself to say. Stevens’s restraint is exasperating by design, and the book’s power comes from the small moments where the reader understands more than the butler admits. Some readers find the pace slow, especially early on, and the prose very quiet. Those who give it time find a subtle, moving novel.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The Remains of the Day is a 1989 novel by the Nobel Prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguro. The protagonist, Stevens, is a butler with a long record of service at Darlington Hall, a fictitious stately home near Oxford, England. In 1956, he takes a motoring holiday to visit a former colleague, and reminisces about events at Darlington Hall in the 1920s and 1930s.
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen once.
- FilmThe Remains of the DayIMDb
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.3 across 875 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 86% of the weight and the score stays at 8.4 — the Historical fiction average of 8.0 barely moves it. A further +0.10 comes from the small bonus for major awards.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.4 | 28 | 3% |
| Hardcover | 8.3 | 847 | 97% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Remains of the Day?
It has 256 pages — shorter than 88% of the ranked books in Historical fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Historical fiction — with scores between 8.3 and 8.4, closest to this book.
