Klara and the Sun (2021) is Kazuo Ishiguro’s eighth novel, and his first published one since he won the Nobel Prize in 2017. Ishiguro first considered writing this story as a children’s book, but his daughter told him it would traumatize young readers so he turned it into a book for adults.
It is often compared to Never Let Me Go (2005), which is about clones and features a similar sort of first-person narration and textual, tonal ambiguity that tends to manifest in perplexity or subtle dread in the reader. Ishiguro himself said in a 2015 interview that “I tend to write the same book over and over again.”
Born in Japan, Ishiguro spent much of his life in England but decided to set this novel in America because of its advanced AI technology as well as his desire to “show a society in flux. I thought it [America] was a more apt place to set a story with a backdrop that could turn dystopian.”
The book received largely positive reviews and was a popular success. It was long-listed for the 2021 Booker Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was on numerous “best of” lists in 2021.
A film adaptation was announced not long after the book’s publication, and as of early 2025 Amy Adams and Jenna Ortega were cast as the Mother and Klara, respectively.
