Constituting the Human in a Dystopian World: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, by Lopamudra Basu

Book Reviews Photo by Dominik Scythe / Unsplash A new book by a Nobel laureate and Booker award-winning author always brings with it a sense of trepidation. Will the new novel live up to the already established high expectations? Klara and the Sun (Knopf, 2021) is particularly tricky because it revisits questions about life in posthuman futures, explored partly in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005). However, Ishiguro’s new novel and its nonhuman narrator, Klara, weave a spell on the reader from the opening pages that continues to be all-absorbing. We forget that the narrator is a robot and remain involved in the vicissitudes of her life, till the final pages when she is waiting for an end to her powers by the slow decline of her electronic circuitry. As we are immersed in the trajectory of Klara’s life, Ishiguro invites us to explore the question of what it is that constitutes us as human. To what extent can machines approximate the qualities of a human, and is there anything unique in the human mind in a world where artificial intelligence is increasingly powerful? The novel begins with Klara being displayed in the window of a store selling AI “friends” to children. Klara is very observant and records her perceptions in her memories for future use. She forms an instantaneous bond with Josie when she comes in to check out AI friends and then waits for many weeks for Josie to come back and take her home as promised.... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'

[ World Literature Today | 2022-03-01 21:50:34 UTC ]
News tagged with: #emotional intelligence #wlt receives #bookshop #award-winning author

Other Publishing stories related to: 'Constituting the Human in a Dystopian World: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, by Lopamudra Basu'


Constituting the Human in a Dystopian World: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, by Lopamudra Basu

Book Reviews Photo by Dominik Scythe / Unsplash A new book by a Nobel laureate and Booker award-winning author always brings with it a sense of trepidation. Will the new novel live up to the already established high expectations? Klara and the... Continue reading at World Literature Today

[ World Literature Today | 2022-03-01 21:50:34 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #emotional intelligence #wlt receives #bookshop #award-winning author


In Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Klara and the Sun,’ a robot tries to make sense of humanity

Ishiguro’s first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in 2017 is a delicate, haunting story, steeped in sorrow and hope. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2021-03-02 16:46:21 UTC ]
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Faber details campaign for Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun

Faber has detailed its publicity and marketing for Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun, published this week, which features the first ever in-conversation public event between Ishiguro and his daughter, Naomi. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2021-03-03 07:25:11 UTC ]
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Android morality tale ‘Klara and the Sun’ is not the usual dystopian saga

Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro explores the effects of technology on humans through the eyes of an ever-sunny, ever-likable cyborg. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor

[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2021-03-01 14:06:50 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #prize-winning author


‘Klara and the Sun’: Do androids dream of human emotions?

A likable android studies human behavior in Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Klara and the Sun,” which explores the effects of AI. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor

[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2021-03-01 14:06:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #human emotions #prize-winning author


Kazuo Ishiguro song lyrics collection to be published

The prize-winning novelist’s lyrics, written for US jazz singer Stacey Kent, will be published with illustrations next MarchA collection of lyrics written by the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro for the American jazz singer Stacey Kent is due to be published next year.“I’ve built a reputation over the... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2023-09-14 15:03:01 UTC ]
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How Does Human History Blur into the Nonhuman World?

Emergence Magazine is an online publication with annual print edition exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality. As we experience the desecration of our lands and waters, the extinguishing of species, and a loss of sacred connection to the Earth, we look to emerging... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2022-08-01 08:51:54 UTC ]
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If only humans could sense the world the way animals do

Book review of "An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us" by Ed Yong Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2022-07-01 12:00:27 UTC ]
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Kazuo Ishiguro: ‘Some awful things have happened in the last year . . . but these are not uninteresting times’

The Nobel Prize winner talks about the pandemic, his novel “Klara and the Sun,” fatherhood and more. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2021-06-22 14:00:00 UTC ]
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World Book Night plans revealed with Toksvig, Nicholls and Ishiguro

The Reading Agency has revealed full plans for World Book Night 2021 with writer, TV star and literacy advocate Sandi Toksvig as the 10th anniversary event's lead ambassador. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2021-03-31 18:13:40 UTC ]
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Kazuo Ishiguro on the Joys of Repetition

At the Guardian, Kazuo Ishiguro discusses his newest book, Klara and the Sun, and how this latest offering echoes themes and ideas he has often explored in his previous work. “Literary novelists are slightly defensive about being repetitive,” Ishiguro says. “I think it is perfectly justified:... Continue reading at The Millions

[ The Millions | 2021-02-26 21:30:38 UTC ]
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Kazuo and Naomi Ishiguro join Southbank Centre's Inside Out season

Father and daughter Kazuo and Naomi Ishiguro will come together at an event for the first time in the Southbank Centre's "Inside Out" season, organisers have announced. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2021-02-14 18:59:02 UTC ]
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Septemberland, How to Find Your Way in a Post-9/11 Dystopian World

TO BE A STRANGER in your own land is alienating enough, but to be a stranger among your own people? That vexing question is at the heart of two books — one a Bildungsroman, the other a memoir — by Arab authors whose narratives might be best described as the misadventures of the insider-outsider.... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books

[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-02-15 18:00:32 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with: #arab authors #memoir


Kazuo Ishiguro Wins Nobel Prize in Literature 2017

In its citation, the Swedish Academy commended Ishiguro as an author "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world." Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2017-10-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Marketing must be 'human' in world of 'unprecendented change', conference hears

Consumers are looking to brands to tell stories in ways that feel "modern, connected and personal" in a world that is going through an "unprecedented state of change", Julia Kenyon, director of brand and content marketing of BBC Worldwide has said. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2017-06-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Can mobile save the world from a dystopian ad future?

Google’s buy button and other mobile tech can allow advertisers to leave behind the “spray and pray” approach of days gone byLike many children of the 1970s, I spent many hours immersed in the futuristic visions of the comic book 2000AD, whose Judge Dredd stories were compellingly dystopian. One... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2015-06-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Just when we need it, ‘Humans’ reminds us what it means to be human

“Humans of New York” author Brandon Stanton shares 16 photos from his globe-spanning new book. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2020-10-06 13:53:03 UTC ]
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Dystopian authors reflect on our dystopian border

“We write dystopian stories to be cautionary tales, not instruction manuals,” says Neal Shusterman. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2019-07-14 18:14:39 UTC ]
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J&J's World Cup Campaign Barely Mentions Soccer or World Cup

No soccer players, no references to Rio de Janiero or Brazil. Is this any way to launch a World Cup campaign?Johnson & Johnson thinks so. The official health-care sponsor of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil is kicking off its U.S. marketing effort for the games by hardly mentioning them.... Continue reading at Advertising Age

[ Advertising Age | 2014-06-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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