When We Were Orphans is the fifth novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguro, published in 2000.

His fame as a private investigator soon spreads, and in 1937 he returns to China to solve the most important case of his life.

At this time in China, Christopher is caught up in the Second Sino-Japanese War battles, which reach into the foreigners' enclave of Shanghai.

He learns from Philip (a former lodger at their residence in Shanghai whom Christopher called uncle as a boy) that his father ran away to Hong Kong with his new lover and that his mother a few weeks later insulted Chinese warlord Wang Ku, who then seized her to be his concubine.

Philip reveals the source of Christopher's living expenses and tuition fees during his schooling in England.

[5] Philip Hensher wrote that "The single problem with the book is the prose, which, for the first time, is so lacking in local colour as to be entirely inappropriate to the task in hand."

He concludes that "The resolution is moving and graceful, but the problem of the voice is a universal one, present and incredible in every sentence".

[6] Michiko Kakutani said that "Mr. Ishiguro simply ran the notion of a detective story through the word processing program of his earlier novels, then patched together the output into the ragged, if occasionally brilliant, story we hold in our hands.