COPENHAGEN – British author Kazuo Ishiguro has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy announced on Thursday.

The English writer, who was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954, before he moved to the United Kingdom at the age of five, has written eight books, among them “The Remains of the Day” (1989), which was turned into James Ivory’s 1993 movie of the same name.

The Academy chose Ishiguro for the prestigious award for his “novels of great emotional force” and having “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”

Memory, time and self-deception are recurring themes in his work, the Academy observed.

The laureate has dabbled in science fiction, with his dystopian work “Never Let Me Go” (2005) and his latest book, “The Buried Giant” (2015), which explores how memory relates to forgetfulness, history to the present and fantasy to reality, according to the Academy.

Ishiguro studied English and Philosophy at the University of Kent before going on to read creative writing at the University of East Anglia.

His first novel, “A Pale View of Hills” was published in 1982 and saw him win the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize.

Six years later, he won the Booker Prize with “The Remains of the Day.”

The cash prize for this year was 9 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million) after the foundation boosted the amount for the first time in five years.

The Nobel week began on Monday, with the prizes in sciences being handed out Monday through Wednesday.

Friday will see the highly anticipated Nobel Peace Prize being announced, while Economy will be announced on Monday.