There is something unsettling about hearing the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy announce that the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature will be given to Kazuo Ishiguro for "uncover[ing] the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".

After all, the Nobel Prize in Physics this year was given to Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves." Gravity waves presumably exist.

Has the Swedish Academy declared my sense of connection with the world illusory? Has Kazuo Ishiguro proved the existence of an abyss beneath my being? Has he discovered my nothingness?