Iain Maloney listed An Artist of the Floating World as an essential novel for Japanophiles.[20] Robert McCrum ranked it as one of the 100 greatest novels ever written.[21]
The novel was shortlisted for the 1986 Booker Prize[4] and won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award[3] for the same year. It was a nominee for ALA best books for young adults.
The Nobel Foundation, which awarded Ishiguro the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature, noted in its biography of the author that An Artist of the Floating World was the work that made him "a highly visible young writer".[22]
