Klara and the Sun

Kazuo Ishiguro
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Klara and the Sun

Kazuo Ishiguro
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Found in: FICTION, General Fiction

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Overview

HEATHER'S PICK320 PAGESENGLISH

Promotional Details

Overall rating: 4.451613 / 5 from 62 reviews.

AI Generated Review Summary

Klara And The Sun is a highly acclaimed novel by Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, praised for its beautiful writing and captivating narrative. The story, told from the perspective of an Artificial Friend named Klara, offers a unique look at our changing world and explores profound questions about love.

Summary topics

  • Enjoyment Level (24%): Many customers raved about this book, describing it as fantastic, enjoyable, and a fascinating read.
  • Writing Quality (50%): Many customers pointed out that this book is beautifully written and one of the finest by the author.

Review topics: [book, read, story, written, novel, writing, journey, ishiguro, characters, sun, look, enjoyed, author, themes, rating, future, aspects, narrative, world, experience, questions, ramifications, relationship, copy, friend, ambiguity].

Review highlights

  • "This book was a very interesting read."Susanne
  • "I absolutely love this book and was excited to pick up this copy for my book club’s gift exchange"Ashleigh
  • "Stunning book, beautifully written and a joy to read"Jessica

Reviews

AF Phenomenology

"I read this book after reading “Annie Bot”. I enjoyed that book’s more feminist perspective. But “Klara and the Sun” has a sweetness that “Annie Bot” lacks. Klara is an innocent. She is trusting, loyal, expresses few regrets, and is persistently (even irrationally) optimistic. (In these ways she sounds like a much beloved family dog. ) Klara is also weird—or, rather, Klara’s Being-ness is weirdly not-human. There are, for example, moments when Klara’s vision “splits” or “fragments,” when a single visual plane becomes multiple “boxes,” each capturing a different visual aspect or detail. This state of fragmentation might signify emotional intensity or anxiety, indicating Klara’s heightened state of perceptiveness. Or it might indicate a technological improvement (an “uplift”). Or, maybe, a programming glitch. Which is to say: Klara’s perception of the world, and thus her understanding of it, is determined by her materiality. The real tragedy of “Klara and the Sun” is that no one, other than the pathetic Mr. Capaldi, seems to acknowledge the possibility of a distinct AF phenomenology."

Drew2026 (5/5)

Amazing

"Ishiguro has an unparalleled ability to craft dystopian societies which are simultaneously shocking and disorientating, yet oddly familiar -- they are believable because they take present values or ideas and stretch them to the extreme. He also has an unmatched ability to construct scenes in which misunderstandings cause conflict, so awkward and frustrating that the reader wishes they could intervene."

Leon (5/5)

A lovely and compassionate read

"I really enjoyed reading Klara and the Sun, it was unlike any other book I have previously read. I found it to be a very interesting and emotionally rewarding experience."

Chlo (5/5)

Another Ishiguro masterpiece

"Observing and questioning humanity from non-human eyes, reminding us who we are."

Safak (5/5)

Humanization of AI

"Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel is a beautiful story that challenge what it truly is that makes us human."

Isabella R. (5/5)

Book club best

"Amazing book for a book club , because it gives a lot of materials and topics to a fun, animated discussion to have. However, if you reads this on your spare time for your own fun. You’ll be bored out of your mind. It really got interesting at like 75% of the book. I understand the high ratings. Add it to your next book club read not on your personal to read list."

Mika008 (3/5)

Klara and the Sun

"Very interesting book and the ending is quite disturbing"

Terry (5/5)

Must read

"A beautiful and philosophical novel. I haven't finished it yet but I love the writing style so far, the atmosphere, and how intelligent it is."

Jean (5/5)

It’s alright

"It’s not too exciting but if you want to feel smart with Ishiguro’s language and see the world through the eyes of an AI who really isn’t all that smart but everyone thinks she is, then this is it"

Melody (3/5)

Ishiguro does it again

"Kazuo Ishiguro paints another quietly beautiful portrait of normal life under complicated, sometimes fraught future conditions. This is book that will ""never let me go"". I actually hugged it when I finished reading."

KWick (5/5)

Q&A

  • Published date: Mar 01, 2022
  • Language: English
  • No. of Pages: 320
  • Publisher: Knopf Canada
  • ISBN: 9780735281264
  • Dimensions: 5.17" W x 0.65" L x 8.0" H
INTERNATIONAL & #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE
ONE OF PRESIDENT OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
NAMED A BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times, Time, NPR, Washington Post, Vogue, USA Today, Town & Country, The Guardian, Vulture, and more

One of the most affecting and profound novels Ishiguro has written. . . . I'll go for broke and call Klara and the Sun a masterpiece that will make you think about life, mortality, the saving grace of love: in short, the all of it.” Maureen Corrigan, NPR

“There is something so steady and beautiful about the way Klara is always approaching connection, like a Zeno’s arrow of the heart. People will absolutely love this book, in part because it enacts the way we learn how to love. Klara and the Sun is wise like a child who decides, just for a little while, to love their doll. “What can children know about genuine love?” Klara asks. The answer, of course, is everything.” —Anne Enright, The Guardian

“A delicate, haunting story, steeped in sorrow and hope.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“What stays with you in Klara and the Sun is the haunting narrative voice—a genuinely innocent, ego-less perspective on the strange behaviour of humans obsessed and wounded by power, status and fear. This is a fiction that not only asks in general about the nature of consciousness and personal dignity but presses home the assumptions we make about how we value some consciousnesses more than others and how we make others serve the cause of our survival.” —2021 Booker Prize committee

“With his new novel, the Nobel Prize-winner reaffirms himself as our most profound observer of human fragility in the technological era.” —Giles Harvey, The New York Times

“Moving and beautiful. . . an unequivocal return to form, a meditation in the subtlest shades on the subject of whether our species will be able to live with everything it has created. . . . [A] feverish read, [a] one-sitter. . . . Few writers who’ve ever lived have been able to create moods of transience, loss and existential self-doubt as Ishiguro has — not art about the feelings, but the feelings themselves.” —The Los Angeles Times

“For four decades now, Ishiguro has written eloquently about the balancing act of remembering without succumbing irrevocably to the past. Memory and the accounting of memory, its burdens and its reconciliation, have been his subjects. . . Klara and the Sun complements [Ishiguro’s] brilliant vision. . . . There’s no narrative instinct more essential, or more human.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A delicate, haunting story.” —The Washington Post

“As with Ishiguro’s other works, the rich inner reflections of his protagonists offer big takeaways, and Klara’s quiet but astute observations of human nature land with profound gravity . . . This dazzling genre-bending work is a delight.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A haunting fable of a lonely, moribund world that is entirely too plausible.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A deft dystopian fable about the innocence of a robot that asks big questions about existence” The Financial Times

“Flawless . . . This is a novel for fans of Never Let Me Go, with which it shares a DNA of emotional openness, the quality of letting us see ourselves from the outside, and a vision of humanity which — while not exactly optimistic — is tender, touching and true.” —John Self, The Times (UK)

“With its hushed intensity of emotion, this fable about robot love and loneliness confirms Ishiguro as a master prose stylist.” —Ian Thomson, The Evening Standard

“The novel is a masterpiece of great beauty, meticulous control and, as ever, clear, simple prose.” —Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times
KAZUO ISHIGURO was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of five. His eight previous works of fiction have earned him many honors around the world, including the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Booker Prize. His work has been translated into over fifty languages, and The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, both made into acclaimed films, have each sold more than 2 million copies. He was given a knighthood in 2018 for Services to Literature. He also holds the decorations of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star from Japan.

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