The Buried Giant
by Kazuo Ishiguro · first published 2001
61% recommend11% neutral28% critical
Why HN recommends it
A quiet, dreamy fantasy about memory and self-deception, told in a fable-like tone. Its poetic prose and emotional impact stand out, and it suits literary fiction that bends into genre.
Common criticism: Several readers found it slow or did not finish it, and it lacks the pace of typical fantasy.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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…YA fantasy tropes and has a solid magic system. Can't recommend this series highly enough, both my literary and scifi/fantasy fan friends have all really enjoyed it. I'd also recommend Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, very close to literary fiction. It steps a little outside of the bounds of what we think of as "fantasy", but the magical realism genre has a lot of amazing pieces, and the genre is based around fantastical…
on “Harper Lee has died” ↗I adored Between the World and Me by Ta-Nahisi Coates and Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant.
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2016?” ↗To continue the Ishiguro and Hemingway theme, two of the books I enjoyed most this year were The Buried Giant (Ishiguro) and The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway).
on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2017?” ↗…December - George Saunders * Nocturnes - Kazuo Ishiguro * After the Quake - Haruki Murakami * The Girl in the Flammable Skirt - Aimee Bender Longer Form (but all still quick reads): * The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro * Death with Interruptions - Jose Saramago * The Whispering Muse - Sjon
on “Ask HN: Which book are you reading these days?” ↗…probability computer in Conrad’s Fate. . Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. Recommended by a barber after I mentioned the cartoon "Scavengers Reign". Annihilation is well worth reading. . The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Novel about memory, forgetting. . Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. Short novel imagining Einstein's dreams whilst he worked on his relativity theory.
on “Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?” ↗…recommendations come up. Anyways rant over. On a more positive note, the author's post has put of new names / titles on my reading list. I think my next read will probably be something by Ishiguro: > [The Buried Giant] follows an elderly Briton couple, Axl and Beatrice, living in a fictional post-Arthurian England in which no-one is able to retain long-term memories. The couple have dim memories of having had a son,…
on “Science Fiction Is Dying. Long Live Post Sci-Fi?” ↗Kazuo Ishiguro - The Buried Giant
on “Haruki Murakami Introduces the Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories” ↗…if his books he stays very close to his main themes – memory, introspection, self-deception – while playing with and exploring various different genres: historical, dystopia, detective, fantasy... The Buried Giant for example is a quite unsual fantasy novel, one that really moved me.
on “Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)” ↗…https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/538034/exhalation-b... - Olondria (series) https://smallbeerpress.com/books/2013/04/30/a-stranger-in-ol... - Her Body And Other Parties: Stories https://graywolfpress.org/books/her-body-and-other-parties - The Buried Giant https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/85613/the-buried-gi... - Radiance https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780765335302 * Will Take You On A Journey - The Changeling https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/234343/the-changeli...…
on “The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of the Past Decade” ↗If your part-way through The Buried Giant, it has a solid ending (IMHO) - like Never Let Me Go, the characters realize that they have made some foundational assumptions that aren't quite right, but unlike that novel they do have the opportunity…
on “Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)” ↗I've only read "The Buried Giant", but can strongly recommend it. Beautiful, and sad, dreamy, poetic and fable-like.
on “Kazuo Ishiguro uses artificial intelligence to reveal the limits of our own” ↗…scared of it. It's supposed to be a glorious mess and impossible to enjoy if you try to make the wrong kind of sense out of it. I'm extra nervous (and also excited) because I didn't get much out of The Buried Giant (or haven't yet, anyway.)
on “Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)” ↗…Seveneves and REAMDE, Nightwoods. Bonus: gut-wrenchingly awful books I started reading and aborted (or worse, read to the end on the misguided hope that somehow they would redeem themselves): California, The Buried Giant, Avogadro / A.I. Apocalypse, Wool, Mr. Mercedes, Terms of Enlistment. Probably half of them I still have not read.
on ““Tsundoku,” the Japanese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves” ↗Gene Wolfe (Book of the New Sun) is great and a common recommendation along these lines. Ishiguro's The Buried Giant from last year asks to be described as Literary Fiction with a fantasy setting. But chasing down "If you liked Gene Wolfe you might like.." recommendations online would probably be fruitful.
on “Harper Lee has died” ↗This topic is the subject of Kazuo Ishiguro's book "The Buried Giant" where a long-married couple explore medieval England to understand why everyone has forgotten their history, and discover that it was probably for the best. Never thought that would be on-topic at HN.
on “The cult of memory: when history does more harm than good” ↗