The robot as carer: Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro, reviewed

The world of Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel — let’s call it Ishville — is instantly recognisable. Our narrator, Klara, is arranging traumatic memories into comprehensible order. She is a robot, an Artificial Friend or AF, purchased as a companion for an ill teenager named Josie. Klara’s speaking voice, in a C3PO-ish way, is endearingly off-kilter: ‘I was instructed to ensure against hanky-panky.’ ‘I’m sorry. It’s my error. I don’t understand yet the rules about forgiveness.’ There is no backstory explaining when the robots were invented, and no metaphors except the one shining in the title. When Klara has been bought, she wonders what emotions she might experience if she ever meets an old AF companion again. ‘Would I then feel… pain alongside my happiness?’ We’re in Ishville, so you can guess the answer.

Ishiguro is often compared with his fellow British Nobel laureate William Golding — both write allegories clothed with human stories.