Never let me go

England, late 1990s. Kathy H., a carer, looks back on her school-days at Hailsham. It is an idyllic place, with an art room, playing fields and a duck pond – but a very different life awaits its pupils after they graduate. Kept isolated from the outside world, they begin dimly to understand that one day they will have to make ‘donations’, though the nature of these is unclear. Rumours circulate: that the winners of art competitions, or couples who are in love, will be exempt. But neither their privileged education, nor the love between Kathy and her friends Ruth and Tommy, can save them from their eventual fate.nShortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2005, this is both an ingenious dystopian fable and an unforgettable story of friendship, love and the value of human life. Like the Booker Prize-winning The Remains of the Day, also published by The Folio Society, it is above all a story of lost innocence. Kazuo Ishiguro shows a protagonist looking back on a seemingly happy past that appears very different in retrospect.