Title: Klara and the Sun
Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
Genre: Sci-fi; Dystopian
Book Length: 320 Pages
Format Read: eBook
Year Published: March 1, 2022
Date Started: November 12, 2025
Date finished: November 18, 2025
My daughter read this book in her English IB course and recommended I read it because she knows how much I enjoy sci-fi and dystopian stories. She was right. It’s become one of my favorites.
It took me awhile to start it even though I had the physical book (from daughter), but it was because I had/and have a long list of books to get through. I decided to just push this book to the forefront because I wasn’t reading a lot of sci-fi lately and really missed it.
I had no idea this story would be so good! I also had no idea Klara was an AI robot—known in the book as an AF (artificial friend).
The story begins with Klara and several other robots displayed in a store, watching the people outside and hoping to be purchased so they can begin their lives with humans. The robots are a curious and hopeful bunch and get excited when humans walk in. For Klara, there is one particular little girl who wants to choose her, but the girl’s mother refuses at first. They return another time and finally buy her.
Klara soon learns that the little girl is sick and may not live much longer. She also discovers that there might be ways to heal a human, and her programming prompted her to seek out a solution.
This was a wonderful read and made me think about the greater good AI could bring to humanity.
Who should read this book: Anyone who enjoys good writing, a dystopian setting, and literary themes.
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Listening to:
“Tessa” by Steve Jablonsky (Theme track to Transformer: Age of Extinction)
Note: If you want to really feel the story (and possibly shed some tears), listen to this song after you’ve read the book.
From My Corner of the Universe 
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