Klara’s Slow Fade. Recognition in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun

This paper analyses Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun using the Aristotelian notion of anagnorisis and demonstrates the two kinds of recognition involved in such a reading protocol. First, placing the narrative in the context of science fiction classics allows us to recognise the science fiction toolkit Ishiguro is using: his novel recycles motives, character types, and iconic scenes from popular books and films about robots by, among others, Ridley Scott, Stanisław Lem, and Steven Spielberg. Existing scholarship on Ishiguro and science fiction enables me to contextualise this point. Second, the novel leads us to recognise real-life issues in the dystopian world of Klara. Recognising the mechanisms described by Zygmunt Bauman and Bruno Latour in the fate of the characters invokes both terror and pity, as the reader is prompted to see the world in the novel as their own future and themselves as wasted beings.