March 2021
It was in 2008 when I read my first Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go. It would take another 9 years before he would win the Nobel, but that book already established that he would persist as one of my favorite novelists. In the years that followed, his other works consistently lured me back to an inimitable realm of pensive storytelling, but a phantom pain still pierces my heart when I think about it. Even to this day, it has not let me go.
And here comes Klara and the Sun, his first novel after the Nobel. This book cannot be more relevant to our generation. Never Let Me Go and Klara and the Sun represent what great art is for me: The kind that keeps you awake and urges you to ponder what it is to be human, the kind that encourages you to be more alive and insightful; Art that remains dignified even when it unsettles — a pain that you would feel alongside your happiness.*
*a nod to a line from the book
The Book-Butterfly 