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"I would hope all the Nobel Prizes would be a force for something positive in the world."

British Japanese writer Kazuo Ishiguro has won the 2017 Nobel Prize for Literature.

As reported by the BBC, the 62-year-old author has written eight books, which have been translated into over 40 languages.

Speaking to the BBC about his prize, Ishiguro said, “it’s a magnificent honour, mainly because it means that I’m in the footsteps of the greatest authors that have lived, so that’s a terrific commendation.”

“The world is in a very uncertain moment and I would hope all the Nobel Prizes would be a force for something positive in the world as it is at the moment,” he added. “I’ll be deeply moved if I could in some way be part of some sort of climate this year in contributing to some sort of positive atmosphere at a very uncertain time.”

Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954, before moving to England when his father was posted as an oceanographer in Surrey. He read English and philosophy at the University of Kent and studied an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia.

His first novel A Pale View of Hills was originally his thesis and was published in 1982. The author’s 1989 book The Remains of the Day wont he Booker Prize in 1989.

Ishiguro was described by the Swedish Academy as one “who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world”.