Kazuo Ishiguro new novel "Klara and the Sun" deals with...

Kazuo Ishiguro new novel "Klara and the Sun" deals with a robot who is an Artifical Friend... . Credit: Andrew Testa for the NYT

KLARA AND THE SUN by Kazuo Ishiguro (Knopf, 320 pp., $28)

Klara, the narrator of the new novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, isn’t human, but understanding humans is her mission. In "Klara and the Sun," the reader follows her in that mission, in a world that seems like our own in a none too distant future. It’s a dazzling and deeply moving journey.

Ishiguro, who was born in Japan but has lived most of his life in England, has written seven previous novels, including the Booker Prize-winning "The Remains of the Day." "Klara and the Sun" is his first novel since he received the Nobel Prize for literature in 2017. It underscores how well he deserved that prize, in its beautiful craft and prose and in its tender but unflinching sense of the human heart.Klara is an AF, or Artificial Friend, a type of robot with a human appearance and a high degree of artificial intelligence, designed to serve as a companion to a child or teenager.

The book begins when she is "new," living in a store that sells AFs on a busy city street and learning to make sense of her little piece of the world. Some things are programmed into her AI. She can estimate at a glance a person’s age and whether his suit jacket reveals "high rank" social status. She can judge whether the minute crinkles around a woman’s eyes indicate a smile or suspicion.

Klara has a deep reverence for the sun, which she regards as a deity. It might seem an odd belief to build into an android, but AFs are solar powered, so attention to the sun is a matter of survival for them — and, as Klara comes to believe, perhaps for some humans.When it comes to things not in her code, Klara is programmed to observe and learn. When 14-year-old Josie and her mother come to the store, Klara notes the girl is pale and thin and walks with difficulty, but that she is also bright and adept at manipulating adults. Josie notices how Klara feels about the sun and promises her they can watch the sun set together at her house.

Before long, Klara is Josie’s AF, living in a comfortable house far outside the city with those sunset views. Josie is delighted with her; it takes longer for Klara to figure out how to get along with the Mother, a tense woman who dashes off to work each morning.

Klara’s quiet life with Josie is upended by a trip to the city. It has several purposes: Josie will see her father (her parents are divorced) and visit an artist who is creating a portrait of her, while Josie's friend Ricky and his mother will come along to meet a man who might be able to change Ricky’s future.

The trip is a rush of revelations about all of those characters, one that Klara finds almost overwhelming.

"Klara and the Sun" is the new novel by Kazuo...

"Klara and the Sun" is the new novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. Credit: Knopf

The quietly stunning finale of Klara’s story may make you feel a little like one of the first famous AFs, the Tin Man in "The Wizard of Oz," when he said, "Now I know I have a heart, because it’s breaking."

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