If you’d been asked at the beginning of the year whose new novel would feature ogres, pixies and a she-dragon called Querig, I suspect you might have taken a while to guess that the answer was Kazuo Ishiguro. Admittedly, since his career-establishing 1980s triumphs with An Artist of the Floating World and The Remains of the Day, Ishiguro has been at some pains to distance himself from poignant, perfectly-wrought narratives by uptight self-deceivers who find themselves on the wrong side of history.