Writers Who Read #38

6 February 2022

Klara and the Sun
by Kazuo Ishiguro

Literary Forensics

 

Author/Publisher Intent

Stylistic Choices

Structure, Pacing

Climax - what changed?

Scene sleuthing

Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro

  • Marketing: #2 in Metaphysical Fiction, #6 in Dystopian Science Fiction, #8 in Metaphysical & Visionary Fiction
  • Genre: Near-Future Realistic (Speculative) Long-Form Fiction
  • Print Pages: 321
  • Word count: 93,667; Avg. wds/sent.: 12.68
  • Reading Level: Grade 7; Lexical Density: 44.55
  • Flesch Reading Ease: 77.12

  • POV: Klara; Person: 1st; Tense: Past

  • Publish date: March 2, 2021
  • Publisher: Knopf
  • Sold By: Random House
  • Audio book narr.: Sura Slu (10 hrs, 16 mins)

  • Awards: Longlisted 2021 Booker Prize
  • Sir Kazuo Ishiguro      

  • Born Nagasaki, Japan, 1954; moved to UK 1960
  • 8 novels; numerous short stories; 5 screenplays; 5 novel adaptations

  • Awards
  • 1986: Whitbread Prize for An Artist of the Floating World
  • 1989: Booker Prize for The Remains of the Day
  • 2017: Nobel Prize in Literature

  • Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award, Order of the Rising Sun, 2nd Class, Gold and Silver Star, Appointed Knight Bachelor for services to literature

"Maybe the very thing that makes human beings rather special, which is their complexity and their individuality, actually kind of dooms them to a certain kind of fundamental loneliness."
- Kazuo Ishiguro

"My focus in this book isn’t so much Klara, and how human is she or is she not: it’s the humans. The idea we have about human beings having souls and being very individual. Is that something we’ve kind of slightly overstated? Or is it a hangover from some kind of past age, a more superstitious religious age?"
- Kazuo Ishiguro

Novel Countour Map

Around the Table

Please use passages from the book

Writers Who Read: Coming Up

March 6: The Plot - Jean Hanff Korelitz (USA, 2021)
April 3: The Promise - Damon Galgut (S. Africa, 2021)
May 1: Intimacies - Katie Kitamura (USA, 2021)
June 5: Crossroads - Jonathan Franzen (USA, 2021)




Thanks to: Boulder Writers Alliance

Contact Gary: hello@garyalanmcbride.com
Literary Forensics Resources

Happy
Sleuthing!