Klara and the Sun

Synopsis

Klara is an Artificial Friend waiting in a shop to be chosen. She observes customers and the people passing the window with unusual attention, before her life becomes connected to a girl named Josie. Through a manufactured companion's view of a household, Kazuo Ishiguro's standalone novel asks what care and affection mean when companionship is also an assigned purpose. Its intimate setting offers a literary science-fiction approach to artificial consciousness, human expectations and the limits of interpretation. The original novel was published in 2021; translated editions and later paperbacks are separate bibliographic events.