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descriptions from Wikipedia:

The novel is about a British man named Christopher Banks who used to live in the Shanghai of colonial China in the early 1900s, but when his father, an opium businessman, and his mother disappear within an interval of a few weeks, Christopher is sent away to live with his aunt in Britain. Christopher vows to become a detective in order to solve the case of his parents' disappearance, and he achieves this goal through ruthless determination. His fame as a private investigator soon spreads, and in the late 1930s he returns to China to solve the most important case of his life. The impression is given that if he solves this case, a world catastrophe will be averted but it is not apparent how. As Christopher pursues his investigation, the boundaries between fact and fantasy begin to evaporate. At this time in China, there are battles between the Japanese and Chinese, and Christopher gets caught up in them.

In When We Were Orphans Kazuo Ishiguro uses the conventions of crime fiction to create a moving portrait of a troubled mind, and of a man who cannot escape the long shadows cast by childhood trauma. Sherlock Holmes needed only fragments - a muddy shoe, cigarette ash on a sleeve - to make his deductions, but all Christopher has are fading recollections of long-ago events, and for him the truth is much harder to grasp.

The narrative is in the first person by Christopher Banks. Ishiguro conjures time and place with precise detail, evoking both the exotic atmosphere of pre-war Shanghai, festering with the contrast between the arrogant residents of the International Settlement and the Chinese living in squalid slums and supplied with opium by foreign merchants, and class-conscious England, in which one's "connections" depend on family lineage. The novel is yet another book after The Remains Of The Day and The Artist Of The Floating World where Ishiguro skillfully weaves personal joys, sorrows, hopes, anger and turmoil into historical backdrops.

Kazuo Ishiguro OBE (born 8 November 1954) is a British novelist. He was born in Nagasaki, Japan, and his family moved to England in 1960. Ishiguro obtained his Bachelor's degree from University of Kent in 1978 and his Master's from the University of East Anglia's creative writing course in 1980. He became a British citizen in 1982.

Ishiguro is one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors in the English speaking world, having received four Man Booker Prize nominations, including winning the 1989 prize for his novel The Remains of the Day.

I am moving from the UK to China - hence why not a lot of time to read recently.

This book will be in a box being picked up tomorrow, and hopefully I will see it again in about 3 months time on the other side of the world.

This book has survived its ocean voyage in a container ship from the UK and has successfully met up with me here in China - much sooner than expected. Now it will be sitting in its new home waiting to be read. Starting a new life and job in China means I am not getting much time to read at the moment, but it will not be forgotten.

Going on a trip to Xi'an.
Taking this book with me; will read and release somewhere on my travels.

Christopher certainly does live in a world of his own, seeing thingsdonly in the way that he wants to. He was always so perplexed by those who commented on his character and behaviour when it did not match his only memory of events; perhaps that is what we are all like to a certain degree, remembering things from our own perspective. It is often more interesting to consider how others view us.

It makes me wonder how he would have any success as a detective, but then the cases he investigates are not an intricate part of ther plot. I found the glimpses into his work infuriating as the reader is never let in on the outcome of the case; I has left hanging at several places, which does maintain the interest. Then there is the 'big case'..still not sure what it was about or why it was so important...in his head?

I was captivated by the story and got through it in one day...well worth a read after so long sat on my shelf.

Left on the book swap shelf.

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When you have finished please release it. Keep its journey alive!