Description:
Kazuo Ishiguro’s early short fiction has been discounted by critics as negligible amateur sketches for the more mature and complete novels. Thus the short stories such as “Waiting for J” (1981) and “Getting Poisoned” (1981), among the very first Ishiguro wrote, receive the lowest critical regard, in spite of the fact that these ones approach the thrill, if not the depth and elegancy, of the novels. Through the example of the short story “Getting Poisoned” that has never before been published in Russian, this paper reassesses the stance on Ishiguro’s earliest short stories, in terms of their significance to an understanding of author’s abiding concern for the problem of mental trauma. The following interpretation of the story could make clear that the writer’s earlier fiction and his later one are interrelated in terms оf theme and narrative devices. The paper also shows how the motif of neglecting which is typical of his novels has shaped in the early fiction.