What It Means to Be a Talking Object: Ishiguro's Use of AI Narration in Klara and the Sun

Set in a dystopian version of the United States, Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun relies heavily on the narrative technique of de‐familiarization. This sense becomes clear from the novel's opening passages, which take place in a store that displays Artificial Friends (a form of AI) for sale to the public. Since Ishiguro illustrates this setting from the vantage point of Klara, one of these Artificial Friends, the details divulged highlight much about Klara's nature as well as her precarious position in a landscape populated by humans, genetically altered humans, and Artificial Intelligence alike. Though this novel operates as a critique of humanity, it also sympathetically renders both humans and Artificial Intelligence, all while probing existential and ontological questions about what constitutes personhood and the self.