When we were orphans

Just read this work and am appalled by it. In my opinion this is the worst of Ishiguro's work. It may be aesthetically well-written but I think it is ethically flawed primarily because it trivializes the massacre of the Chinese by the Japanese during WWII. The protagonist in his search for his mother is seemingly deluded and delusional in that his obsession causes him to ignore the reality of what is going on around him. Some could argue that this is part of Ishiguro's aesthetics, that he is not concerned about representing history but is instead exploring the instability of subjectivity which in part may reference the art for art sake's argument i.e. the work of art should be appreciated for itself not for some moral or transcendental message believed to be inherent in it. The question here concerns the ethics and responsibility of writers in adequately representing global trauma, global holocaust and global massacres without trivializing them. This is particularly so given that the book is written for western readers who may be less aware of the asian holocaust. By glossing over this event which is superficially mentioned in the background of the text, the author is complicit in the larger, political trivializing of this in the imagination of the west.