In Kazuo Ishiguro's fifth novel, Christopher Banks is an English boy growing up in Shanghai. His parents disappear and are eventually presumed dead, and Christopher is raised in England by an aunt. As an adult, he becomes a prominent detective who returns to Shanghai to try to find out what happened to his family. The fateful year of his return is 1937, when the Japanese massacred 250,000 Chinese, and things become perilous for Banks as he searches through his parents in what has now become a war zone. In the end, he discovers a fact about his past that threatens his entire way of life. As a background to his obsession is his near-romance with a society woman named Sarah, as well as the loss of his friendship with his boyhood playmate, Akira. A New York Times Notable Book for the year 2000.