Contamination of Genres in the Novel “When We Were Orphans” by K. Ishiguro

Abstract

The use of different genres in a literary work at the same time is one of the leading principles of postmodern literature. The aim of the paper is to determine how this principle manifests itself in the novel “When We Were Orphans” by the modern British writer K. Ishiguro. Scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that it is the first to identify genre forms used in the novel, to understand their transformation and determine their functions. As a result, it has been proved that the novel is built on the contamination of the following genres: the work is a mystery novel, a love story, a family romance, an anti-colonial novel and a Bildungsroman. It has been shown that all the borrowed genres undergo more or less recoding, blurring traditional genre paradigms and leading to the formation of a hybrid genre form.