Klara and the Sun: Genre 1 key example

AFs aren’t the only distinctive feature of Ishiguro’s fictional world, in which children take virtual classes on digital “oblongs” and fulfill their social needs through carefully arranged “interaction meetings.” Klara’s society is an equally dystopian one, where scientific innovation has advanced to the extent that humans can fundamentally change themselves. Through her service to Josie, Klara reveals a privileged elite that takes advantage of “lifting”—a vaguely defined medical operation intended to enhance its patients’ intellectual abilities. The technology in this world has drastically expanded the limits of possibility.

The novel’s thematic preoccupations are of a piece with Ishiguro’s earlier works, such as Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day. Like The Remains of the Day, a novel about the butler of a Nazi sympathizer, Klara and the Sun is told from a position of servility. Klara is an AF assistant, tasked with caring for her owner and even praying for her recovery. Like Never Let Me Go, in which its clone protagonists dedicate their lives to organ harvesting, the novel also raises bioethical concerns in Josie’s “lifting” operation and the increasingly fuzzy divisions between robot and human. Through its subject matter, this work of science fiction opens to a futuristic reality that is both recognizable and, frighteningly, not.