British author Kazuo Ishiguro has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, the Swedish Academy announced in a news conference in Stockholm on Thursday.
The Academy said Ishiguro, "in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".
Describing Ishiguro's writing style, the Academy's Sara Danius said, "if you mix Jane Austen and Franz Kafka then you have Kazuo Ishiguro in a nutshell, but you have to add a little Marcel Proust into the mix".
She added: "He's a writer of great integrity. He doesn't look to the side. He's developed an aesthetic universe all of his own."
Sara Danius on Kazuo Ishiguro’s style: mix Jane Austen and Franz Kafka - and “add a little bit of Marcel Proust int… https://t.co/efLmN7X816
Ishiguro's most renowned novel is 1989's The Remains of the Day, which won the Man Booker Prize and was later adapted into a film starring Antony Hopkins.
The author, 62, was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and moved to the UK at the age of 5.
He graduated from the University of Kent before studying creative writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
He has been a full-time author since his 1982 debut A Pale View of Hills. In his most recent novel, 2015's The Buried Giant, an elderly couple embark on a journey in the hope of reuniting with their estranged adult son.
In 2016, the Nobel Prize in literature was controversially awarded to singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Referencing last year's uproar, Danius said she hoped the choice of Ishiguro would "make the world happy".