Dear Gossips, 

It was announced earlier this week that Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro’s next book will be released next year. Klara and the Sun tells the story of “an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change for ever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans”.

 

In the press release the publishers (Knopf Canada, Faber & Faber in the UK and Alfred A. Knopf in the US) are positioning this as an international literary event. As it should be. When he won the Nobel in 2017, I wrote then that his books permanently altered how I see the world. With Klara and the Sun, Ishiguro “explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?” But you might say that that’s what he’s been doing in all his work. Never Let Me Go is about how humanity has become a privilege and the price of having to validate one’s humanity, a message that hits especially hard right now as Black and Indigenous people continue to express their outrage that their humanity has been diminished and too often extinguished by the world we all occupy. 

We’ve been taught to believe that to love is human. But in a world currently governed by so much hate, here comes a story that appears to be interrogating how irresponsible humans have been with love. I’m crying already and I haven’t even read a single word. 

Klara and the Sun is coming out March 2, 2021. 

Yours in gossip,

Lainey