This month, Dua is joined by Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro to discuss Klara And The Sun, her October Monthly Read for the Service95 Book Club podcast. Taika Waititi’s film adaptation arrives in cinemas this month, which makes this a timely moment to return to Ishiguro’s speculative novel about the ethical costs of technological advancements, loneliness, hope and what really makes us human.
Klara is an AF – an artificial friend – chosen to be a companion to 14-year-old Josie, a “lifted” teenager whose health is deteriorating. Told through Klara’s eyes, the novel follows her attempts to make sense of the world around her, from the strange rituals of the humans she observes to her unwavering belief in the power of the sun.
Ishiguro explains why he chose Klara as a narrator: her intelligence, eagerness to learn and lack of human baggage allowed him to look at familiar things from an unusual perspective. “I like [my narrator] to be a bit detached,” he says of an approach that also appears in his other books. “The reader is looking afresh at the world from a slightly odd angle.”
Dua and Ishiguro also unpack the novel’s portrayal of a society where children can be genetically edited (or “lifted”) for greater intelligence, and the divisions that emerge between those who are and aren’t. For Ishiguro, his focus here was less about machines taking over and more about highlighting the choices humans make in trying to secure a better future for their children, and what those choices might cost.
Their conversation returns to the question at the heart of the novel: if we believe all humans are unique, can a person ever really be replaced? Dua and Ishiguro weigh up the idea that each of us holds something singular that cannot be captured by data alone. “Maybe if we start to think of ourselves as a set of tendencies that we can actually map out, is that going to do something profound to the way we think about [our humanness]?”
They also reflect on isolation, connection and the power of art to make us feel what cannot always be explained, and why Ishiguro hopes his own work will stay with readers long after they have finished it. Plus, he shares a glimpse of his next novel, a period thriller due to be published in March 2027.
Keep listening until the end for Dua and Ishiguro’s thoughts on seeing Klara And The Sun brought to the big screen, including why he enjoys watching other artists find their own interpretation of his work. “If someone’s doing a cover version of one of your songs, you don’t want to go around looking over their shoulders,” he says, instead describing himself as a “cheerleader on the sidelines. “You want it to be their thing.”
Listen to Dua and Kazuo Ishiguro’s full conversation on Service95’s YouTube channel, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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