Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Our March 2021 Book of the Month

Kazuo Ishiguro was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017 as someone, “who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.” His latest novel, Klara and the Sun, arrives in a time of great loss of life, livelihoods, and of human connection. It is a work that has an AI narrator, that has all of the recognizable restraint, unreliability, and lack of knowledge, of previous characters we have loved and ached for. Klara’s belief in her god-like Sun echoes our deep need to have faith and hope in order to live. Her struggle to not only make sense of humans, but to be human, reveals the complex and indescribable essence of what it is to be a sentient being. Our March Book of the Month is a thoughtful meditation on how we are as individuals, families, and societies. If we have learned anything from our year of isolation, it is that part of how we define ourselves is by who we love, who loves us, who we remember, and who will remember us.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her.

Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

In its award citation in 2017, the Nobel committee described Ishiguro’s books as “novels of great emotional force” and said he has “uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.”