After a friend offered it to her for dinner, his mother ate fugu, which is dangerous if prepared wrong. When the narrator flew to Japan to visit his family two years after his mother's death, he learnt the specifics of her demise. She died at a family supper, when she accidentally took an overdose of the poisonous blowfish teriyaki that everyone else there was eating. Fugu is a type of fish that lives in rivers across Japan. It can be up to 12 cm (5 inches) long and has sharp dorsal spines and venomous fins. The meat from the body of the fish is white and delicious, while the liver contains high levels of mercury. Women who are pregnant or might become pregnant should not eat fugu or any other type of fish because it could cause birth defects or miscarriage. Kazuo Ishiguro was born on January 19th, 1952 in Nagasaki City, Japan. He is an author who has written many books including novels, short stories, and essays. His works have won multiple awards including the Man Booker Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the New York Times Best Seller List. He has also been named one of Britain's best-known authors by BBC News. Kazuo Ishiguro's father was a dentist and his mother was a teacher.