Narrated by John Lee

""John Lee conveys both Banks' intelligence and his uneasy depths in this fine performance."" —AudioFile

A masterful novel from Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day, and one of the most admired writers of our time.

Christopher Banks, an English boy born in early-20th-century Shanghai, is orphaned at age nine when both his mother and father disappear under suspicious circumstances. He grows up to become a renowned detective, and more than twenty years later, returns to Shanghai to solve the mystery of the disappearances.

Within the layers of the narrative told in Christopher's precise, slightly detached voice are revealed what he can't, or won't, see: that the simplest desires—a child's for his parents, a man's for understanding—may give rise to the most complicated truths.

A feat of narrative skill and soaring imagination, When We Were Orphans is Kazuo Ishiguro at his brilliant best.