Kazuo Ishiguro is at his most moving when he writes about the meek. Both also contain a secret moral shift: an advance in technology that has changed people’s sense of what it is to be human, and the emotional punch of Klara, as with Never Let Me Go, comes from the fact that the central character doesn’t know what is going on.

Both novels are set in a speculative future that feels quite like the present. The themes of replication and authenticity are similar to those in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, published in 2005. Klara and the Sun captures this poignancy exactly – not because of the way people believe in Klara, but because of the way she starts to believe in the sun. The credulity of the reader is a hopeful and sometimes beautiful thing. Because even the most rounded fictional character is also a kind of animated doll a code made out of language and the readers’ goodwill, which makes us smile or cry because we believe in it. We love her the way we loved our childhood teddy bear, perhaps, or even in the way we love a fictional character. So we, the readers, love Klara the way we love what is good.

Her role, as she describes it, is to prevent loneliness and to serve. Klara is loyal and tactful, she is able to absorb difficulty and return care. Klara is an AF, or artificial friend, who is bought as a companion for 14-year-old Josie, a girl suffering from a mysterious, perhaps terminal illness.

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