Klara and the Sun is set in a near future in which certain children, selected for genetic enhancement, are closed off from in-person socialization and are given android companions, termed Artificial Friends (AFs). Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel is narrated from the perspective of one such AF, named Klara. Klara’s naive, semi-formed understanding of human society—presented in Ishiguro’s beautifully spare prose—is perceptive, but just off-kilter enough to elicit questions about some of our assumptions of how the world works.
The novel is a subtle exploration of philosophical questions surrounding artificial intelligence, bioengineering, mortality, equality, obsolescence, humanity, and love.
Klara and the Sun was long-listed for both the 2021 Booker Prize and the 2022 Carnegie Medal in Fiction, and was a finalist for the 2022 Prometheus Award. Kazuo Ishiguro was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017.