Klara and the Sun

This is the best book of the last decade, and certainly one of my top reads for the 21st century so far. Ishiguro is aging, but is still the unqualified master of achingly beautiful novel-writing. Klara and the Sun is thoughtful; funny; sad; interesting; tightly written and intricately woven. There is no eat-your-peas here: this is an enjoyable and fun read, and yet comes densely (sneakily?) layered with a thoughtful discourse on artificial life and ethics. Do AI androids have feelings? dignity? religious impulses? Can they be discarded like last year's iPhone, or do they have a right to continuance?… show more.

Haunting and beautiful, it gave me a new perspective on what science fiction can accomplish: Ishiguro’s book is subtle, humane, and deeply concerned with the troubles of the real world.

This story of Klara, an “artificial friend” purchased to keep a sick little girl company, takes up questions of eugenics, artificial intelligence, and, ultimately, what it means to be a human being.

Along the way, the book explores the gulf between economic and social classes with as much care and compassion as Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy—Klara and the Sun is some of the most inspiring science fiction I… show more.

I fell in love with Klara.

Whilst young, she was, at the same time, both naïve and complex, which was what made me like her as a character. I wanted to sit and talk with her about her observations of the people she met and tried to help. I was fascinated by some of her insights into the human race. I felt she was a lovely person but in the wrong place.

I’d been hearing about this book in forums and chatrooms for a while before I read it. Then I heard it won the Nobel Prize for literature. Then I learned its plot involved near-future artificial intelligence and knew I had to read it because I’ve long been fascinated by AI. I’m so glad I did.

If I had to sum up Klara in two words, I’d say it’s crushingly beautiful. It’s somehow both simple and intricate. It somehow explores and shows what it means to be human through AI. 

I now see why Kazuo Ishiguro is regarded as a master,… show more.

Kazuo Ishiguro is a master of making his readers question the reliability of his narrators.

Klara—a robot companion to a little girl—seems sensible enough. She misses nothing and has an eye for details. But as the story unfolds, we start to realize Klara is seriously misguided and misinformed about how the human world works.

This book was heartbreaking. You can’t help but feel for Klara, who struggles to fit into a world where she is no more than a product made for the enjoyment of humans. Klara proves that robots can be so much more than machines and that their… show more.

I love Ishiguro so much that I was apprehensive about starting Klara and the Sun. Would it be as good as Never Let Me Go and Remains of The Day? I was not disappointed. I love Ishiguro because I am totally immersed in his world, and at the same time, he makes me think.

The novel raises lots of interesting questions at a time when we wonder so much about AI. Through the character of Klara, Ishiguro explores the power of religion and makes us wonder whether neurons and science can explain human beings or whether there is something… show more.

In keeping with my preoccupation with questions of how we remain human in a post-humanist world, I’m choosing this gem, which I encountered in an airport on my way back from Portugal this year. In all of his novels, in one form or another, Ishiguro tests the boundaries of humanity and agency.

His most memorable characters have discomfitingly partial claims of full humanity (in this novel and Never Let Me Go) or agency (butler Stevens in Remains of the Day, for example).

No writer conveys meaning more subtly in (deceptively straightforward) style than Ishiguro, and this story of… show more.

This book is about an android who is bought by a family to be a companion for a sickly girl. Like Ishiguro’s masterful Never Let Me Go and The Remains of The Day, this is a book that goes from being about the seemingly smallest details of a quiet life to being about the biggest moral questions possible.

Ishiguro’s last three books have been science fiction and fantasy. He clearly understands that this genre is a literature of ideas. Whenever he writes about things that are not human or not our reality, it makes us question what it… show more.

This book haunts me. It is brilliantly written – as one would expect from a Nobel Laureate - but the genius of this story for me – like that which characterises Never Let Me Go or The Remains of the Day -  is that it seemed to ‘enter the pores’ as I read it, and become part of my thoughtworld, as I went about my daily life.

Months later, I still think of Klara, the eponymous character I wanted to rescue from her indifferent, dystopian setting. Though she isn’t human, Klara is more humane than the people she loves and… show more.

A marvelous book that is cleverly futuristic without being science fiction and deeply human with the lightest touch in writing style.

What impressed me is the pure agnosticism of the story, where no location or time is given, no background about the past and future is clearly given, and yet we know and understand what happens and why.

Ishiguro brings a fresh look at the relationship between man and AI through Klara’s innocent eyes, and the whole story becomes an ensemble of magic realism, blurring the stark reality of future human life and the blissful hope of fairy tales.