The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

I wanted to read Ishiguro's newest novel called The Buried Giant well before it was actually released. However, by the time it was available (November 2015) I didn't have enough time and money to hunt the book. Now, as we moved back to the James Court I found the book on the shelf so finally I had the chance to read it. Spoilers are coming!

The book has five main characters: an elderly couple, Beatrice and Axl, a warrior and his apprentice, Wistan and Edwin, and Arthur's knight, Gawain. The fiction is placed in a world where Christianity and ogres can well exist along with crooked monks and a dragon, and some curious mist that covers the past from the people's minds.

Axl and Beatrice go for a quest to find their son and on the journey they find out things about their past. At the end the mist is gone and they finally be able to recall what happened in earlier times. the buried giant is the past itself. When the mist is lifted from their minds by killing the she-dragon called Querig, the characters are allowed to remember. In one point in the story the elder of a Saxon city says that the forgetfulness of people strives from the fact that God wants to forget therefore the people cannot remember things that was forgotten by God. Leibniz in his philosophy says similar things stating that God needs to keep us in his mind in order to keep us in existence. So its interesting to see how to novel suggests that forgetting things may be a good way to deal with them.

No real forgiveness was found in the characters, so when the past came back to them they let one another go. They departed and turned on one another. The balance and peace that was once part of their world was gone.

God says he forgives us by throwing our sins behind his back as far as the East is from the West. The conclusion for me after reading the book is to cherish the moment over the past, stay in the present instead of looming over the things past. The other one was that forgiveness in its real form is essential and it does involve forgetfulness.

We need to forget others' sins so we may be free to love them now.