Ishiguro to be awarded Bodley Medal

The Bodleian Libraries will present novelist Kazuo Ishiguro with the Bodley Medal, the Libraries’ highest honour, in April. 

The Japanese-born British author will receive the award at the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival on 3rd April 2019, when he will deliver the annual Bodley Lecture. Ishiguro will also appear in conversation with Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s librarian, in the University of Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre and Ovenden will present him with the medal.

The Bodley Medal is awarded by the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries to individuals "who have made outstanding contributions to the worlds in which the Bodleian is active", the library said, including literature, culture, science and communication. Past winners include biographer Claire Tomalin, novelist and screenwriter William Boyd, novelist Hilary Mantel, the late poet Seamus Heaney and writer and actor Alan Bennett.

The announcement comes a year after Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in Literature, which led to a bumper crop of 20 renewal deals flooding into his literary agency Rogers, Coleridge and White.

The FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival runs from 30th March to 7th April 2019. For more information, visit this website.