Recommendations
Books Like Klara and the Sun
Best books to read after Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun is narrated by Klara, an Artificial Friend (a solar-powered humanoid robot), who observes the human world with perfect visual acuity and imperfect understanding. These recommendations continue the Ishiguro canon, explore the tradition of the literary novel about artificial intelligence and non-human consciousness, or offer companion reading in the tradition of the novel about devotion and what it costs.
- 1Buy
Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
The essential companion Ishiguro — Kathy H. and her friends at Hailsham, raised as organ donors; the novel most directly comparable to Klara and the Sun in its interest in beings created for others' benefit who accept their circumstances with a gentleness and intelligence that the reader finds heartbreaking.
- 2Buy
The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro
The companion Ishiguro in the tradition of the narrator devoted to the wrong things — Stevens the butler; shares Klara and the Sun's interest in what devotion costs the person who devotes themselves, and what dignity means for a being whose entire purpose is service.
- 3Buy
The Buried Giant
by Kazuo Ishiguro
The companion Ishiguro fantasy — Axl and Beatrice in post-Arthurian Britain; shares Klara and the Sun's interest in what is remembered and what is forgotten, and in the way love is always entangled with impermanence.
- 4Buy
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by Philip K. Dick
The science fiction predecessor to the question of artificial consciousness — Rick Deckard hunting androids, the Voigt-Kampff test for empathy; the foundational text in the tradition of the science fiction novel that asks what makes a being conscious and whether it matters that an emotional response is artificial.
- 5Buy
Flowers for Algernon
by Daniel Keyes
The companion in the tradition of the literary novel narrated by a non-standard consciousness — Charlie Gordon before and after the operation that dramatically increases his intelligence; shares Klara and the Sun's interest in a narrator whose understanding of the world is both limited and revealing in ways the human characters around them cannot see.
- 6Buy
The Memory Police
by Yoko Ogawa
The companion in the tradition of the literary novel about a world with different rules — Ogawa's island where things disappear; shares Klara and the Sun's quality of a narrator who inhabits a world she does not fully understand and whose limited perspective the reader finds more illuminating than a full understanding would be.
- 7Buy
Exhalation
by Ted Chiang
The companion science fiction short story collection — Chiang's meditations on consciousness, free will, and the relationship between humans and their creations; the science fiction writer whose stories most closely approximate Klara and the Sun's philosophical interest in what it means to be a created, conscious being.
- 8Buy
The Unconsoled
by Kazuo Ishiguro
The companion Ishiguro dream novel — Ryder the pianist in a Central European city; shares Klara and the Sun's quality of a narrator who observes everything and understands less than the reader, and whose gap between perception and understanding is the novel's primary source of meaning.
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