Over the course of their travels, Axl and Beatrice encounter a Saxon warrior, Wistan, who joins them on their journey. The Britons know that the mist is responsible for their inability to call their personal memories to mind, often including events as recent as a few hours past, but they do not know the origin of the mist.

Axl and Beatrice are aware that the reason that neither they nor any of their fellow villagers can remember much of the past with any clarity is the mysterious mist that hangs about the landscape. They have a vague memory of him, but no actual direction to where he lives, or any clear memory of their past life together at all. The story centers around Axl and Beatrice, an elderly British couple, who embark on a journey to their grown son’s village. The action of the story explores what is likely to happen when the dragon dies and the giant awakes, and whether the burial of those memories, though transient, will ensure continued reconciliation for the characters in the story and the groups they represent. Both dragons and giants are significant in the story as well: the memories of atrocities between the native Britons and the Saxons and the forced removal of those memories from both public and individual awareness are symbolized in the novel by the giant of the title, one whose burial ground has been obscured by the breath of a now elderly dragon for a number of years, but which cannot remain hidden for much longer. The Arthurian knight Sir Gawain is an important character, and Arthur and Merlin have played an important role in the conditions of the British inhabitants as the novel opens. Ishiguro uses as the background of his novel the early historical accounts of the time period after the fall of Rome, when the Saxons were beginning to settle in the British Isles, just as it is described in such works as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. Ishiguro further proceeds to ask, if the attempted cancellation of difficult memories does not produce lasting peace, what then does? The novel encourages the reader to consider the idea that the redemption of memories based on the practice of the Christian faith provides the best hope for lasting peace. Ishiguro uses this setting to consider the question of whether the temporary elimination of painful memories, whether national or personal, is sufficient to repair a relationship. It is classified as a fantasy novel, but rather than a world that is purely imaginative, Ishiguro sets his story in a world that takes the early medieval accounts of Dark Ages Britain at face value. Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2016 novel The Buried Giant is a departure from his usual modern or dystopian settings and looks back in time to post-Arthurian Britain.

The buried giant kazuo