The Remains of the Day

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker Prize-winning novel is narrated by Stevens, an English butler who has given his whole life to the service of a great house. On a rare motoring holiday across the countryside, he looks back over decades of duty and begins to sense the cost of his devotion: a love unspoken, a master misjudged, a life not quite lived. Restrained and quietly devastating, it is a meditation on dignity and regret. Jeff Bezos has called it his favorite novel, crediting it with teaching him about life.