University of South Carolina chooses summer reading

The first academic experience for students entering the University of South Carolina this fall will be particularly challenging as they read and discuss a book that tackles topics ranging from cloning and bio-ethics to human equality and dignity.

The First-Year Reading Experience committee, comprising faculty, staff and students, chose the provocative science-fiction novel, “Never Let Me Go,” by British writer Kazuo Ishiguro, for this year’s annual summer-reading program.

The First-Year Reading Experience was launched in 1994 to give new students, regardless of major, a shared academic experience before they begin college life and the rigors of academic study. A trend-setting program at the time, it has been replicated at universities and colleges across the country.

Dr. Ed Madden, chairman of the First-Year Reading Experience book-selection committee, said the committee chose “Never Let Me Go” for its appeal to students across the spectrum of majors, its good writing and its relevance to young adults and to contemporary society.

“‘Never Let Me Go’ is a rich and provocative novel by one of England’s most important contemporary novelists,” said Madden, an associate professor of English. “What seems at first to be a story about a mysterious private school quickly becomes a rich and unsettling dystopian novel that raises questions about bioethics and human dignity. The novel’s exploration of our attitudes toward human bodies and genetic research connects with ethical questions we now face – about genetic engineering, cloning, stem-cell research – as well as addressing fundamental and perennial questions about human dignity and equality.”

The book, published in 2005, is Ishiguro’s sixth novel. Named best novel by Time magazine in 2005, the book is about a woman and her close friends, human clones created to provide donor organs for transplant patients and reared at a boarding school until their time to donate and, ultimately, die. Themes include free will, bio-ethics, genetic engineering and cloning, euthanasia, human equality and dignity and the integrity and respect for the human body. Ishiguro, a native of Nagasaki, Japan, is well known for his earlier, award-winning novel, “The Remains of the Day.”

Students will receive a copy of the book at summer orientation to read before arriving to campus for the fall semester. Plans call for students to assemble for a keynote address Monday, Aug. 18. Afterward, students will meet in small discussion groups, led by faculty and staff, to exchange and share their reactions to the novel.

“Over the past decade the First-Year Reading Experience has become an important hallmark of a Carolina education, said Helen Doerpinghaus, associate provost and dean of undergraduate studies. “Each year a unique book selection gives an identity and common academic experience to the entering class. ‘Never Let Me Go’ was selected for its thematic richness and literary excellence. As students discuss the book with faculty and other students they lay the foundation for a college experience that encourages critical thinking and lively intellectual exchange.”

Among the other books the committee considered was Jonathan Safran Foer’s highly celebrated “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” a post 9-11 novel.

Previous selections for the university’s First-Year Reading Experience can be found on the Web site:

http://www.sc.edu/univ101/initiatives/reading/index.html

The First-Year Reading Experience is sponsored by the Office of the Provost in cooperation with University 101, South Carolina Honors College, the department of English and Thomas Cooper Library.