From the bestselling and Booker Prize winning author of Never Let me Go and The Remains of the Day, a stunning new novel - his first since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature - that asks, what does it mean to love? A thrilling feat of world-building, a novel of exquisite tenderness and impeccable restraint, Klara and the Sun is a magnificent achievement, and an international literary event.

With this stunning new novel, cast in the form of a postmodern nightmare, Ishiguro tells a powerful story in which he once again exploits a narrator's utter lack of self-knowledge to create a devastating deadpan irony. A celebrated concert pianist identified only as Mr Ryder arrives at an unnamed European (seemingly Germanic) city not only to give a concert but also, it seems, to address the townspeople and help them surmount a communal sense of crisis that stems from the city's inability to nurture a musical artist of outstanding creative talent. Strangely, the economic, social and psychic health of the community depends on its regaining its self-image in the wake of a dreadful past mistake, when the city fathers lionized a musician with the "wrong" artistic values. Ryder intuits this situation gradually, for he is curiously disoriented; he can't really remember what he's supposed to be doing there. In fact, through Ryder's confused perceptions, the reader is immediately plunged into a surrealistic landscape that has the eerie unpredictability, claustrophobic atmosphere and strange time sequences of a dream. Everyone in this town presents a false image to the world. Each person Ryder meets addresses him with fawning obsequiousness and asks him for a small favor which turns out to be an egregious intrusion into his time. Yet Ryder, infused with an inflated sense of mission, feels a need to console them: "People need me. I arrive in a place and find terrible problems, and people are so grateful I've come." Although he initially thinks he's a stranger in the city, it slowly becomes obvious that he's been here before. In fact, he has been the lover of a woman called Sophie whose little boy, Boris, in many ways replays the pivotal events of Ryder's own life. With dream logic, many of Ryder's childhood friends from England turn up in this inhospitable place, and it becomes obvious that most events are replicas of ones that have occurred before or that fulfill Ryder's fears about the future. As in Ishiguro's previous books (The Remains of the Day, etc.), almost every turn of the plot concerns a failure of communication and a stifling of emotional responses. Children are profoundly wounded by their self-absorbed and insensitive parents; lovers alienate each other across an emotional abyss. The culture-obsessed inhabitants of the city don't recognize true talent when it appears; they disapprove of creativity when it doesn't fit their expectations. Sustaining the nightmarish atmosphere of this tale?its tone alternately sinister and farcical?for more than 500 pages is a tricky business, especially since all the characters express themselves in long, dense monologues. Yet, so adroit is Ishiguro in maintaining suspense that one is as ensnared in the nightmare as is Ryder. The story seems to be a journey through life: its purpose never entirely clear, its events capricious and inexplicable, its destination undoubtedly "the vast, dark, empty space" of the soul's extinction. 75,000 first printing; BOMC and QPB selections.

國際超級文學作家石黑一雄
2017年摘下諾貝爾文學桂冠後最新創作
在擁有強大情感力量的小說中，揭露人與世界連結的幻覺底下的深淵。
――諾貝爾文學獎授獎詞
這是一部關於人心的小說，從他方而來，對此時此地的你我切切低語。
真實與奇幻交錯的世界，終究掙脫不了人性的枷鎖。――石黑一雄
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人的心，就像是一棟有許多房間的屋子。
我會走遍每個房間，一間間探究，直到它們變成我自己的房間。
克拉拉是最尖端的人工智慧，具敏銳知覺與情感，她的任務是作為孩子的良師益友。她存在的理由，是盡心盡命地陪伴與愛人。
克拉拉對萬千世界充滿好奇，不論是前一刻嘻笑走向櫥窗、下一刻卻臉露哀傷的孩子，還是街角向人乞討的遊民，甚至是奔跑過街急著擁抱彼此的戀人們……她亟欲理解人的喜怒哀樂和離合悲歡。
一天，一個女孩走向坐在窗前的她，她感應到對方告訴她：「有天，我要帶妳回家。」兩人之間的心電交流，像是許下了承諾。但她等了又等，那個女孩都沒再出現。克拉拉慢慢被安排至看不到外面世界的角落，就在某一天，那個女孩又出現了…… 克拉拉與人類家庭的故事隨之展開。
然而，人心的種種執念與反覆無常，生命的轉瞬榮枯，是一條暗潮洶湧、在繼續與放手之間拉扯的旅程。
當陪伴是一場精心安排的魔鬼交易，當智能進展引來無情的反挫，克拉拉被賦予如太陽般恆久的希望與愛，是否恰恰凸顯人的冷酷善變？
小說家 朱嘉漢
台東大學英美語文學系副教授 鄧鴻樹
作家、知名節目主持人 謝哲青 感動推薦
★如同石黑一雄向來深具開創性的小說，《克拉拉與太陽》以獨特且敏銳的視角，探尋愛與人性的主要課題。――時代雜誌Time
★《克拉拉與太陽》之美在於巧妙承接了石黑一雄二○○五年的反烏托邦傑作《別讓我走》，透過科幻的鏡頭，探索愛與犧牲的問題。它拆解我們如何編織與他人的關係以及又是如何否認的糾結網絡，再度展現石黑一雄擅長刻畫人錯失機會與失去連結的痛。――Vogue雜誌
★《克拉拉與太陽》是孤單時刻的最佳伴讀，探究異化、情緒勞動、溝通失敗，以及何謂愛一個拒絕以愛回報的世界。――Vulture雜誌
★《克拉拉與太陽》本質上是一本有關人與人的關係以及是什麼讓人類之所以獨特的小說。「什麼是愛？我們愛的人可以被取代嗎？」石黑一雄問道。在這本小說中，他不斷尋思「愛是否只是個浪漫的主張，以及愛能夠被科技取代是否純然只是幻覺」。――出版人週刊Publisherweekly
★這是石黑一雄作品中我最喜歡的一部。克拉拉是一個出色的敘事者，具有天真與充滿好奇的特質。這也是一本關於人心有多深多廣的小說，克拉拉形容它是「房間裡還有房間」；它同樣探討了記憶和悲傷與愛的關係。――美國Knopf 出版社總編輯暨《克拉拉與太陽》編輯Jordan Pavlin
★《克拉拉與太陽》是典型的石黑一雄，卻也是大膽的嘗試，從一個全新世界出發，但在結構和情感上與石黑其他的小說曲諧。而他所有作品的連結就在於獨創性與連續性。――英國Faber & Faber出版社出版總監暨《克拉拉與太陽》編輯Angus Cargill

One of the most celebrated writers of our time gives us his first cycle of short fiction: five brilliantly etched, interconnected stories in which music is a vivid and essential character.
A once-popular singer, desperate to make a comeback, turning from the one certainty in his life . . . A man whose unerring taste in music is the only thing his closest friends value in him . . . A struggling singer-songwriter unwittingly involved in the failing marriage of a couple he’s only just met . . . A gifted, underappreciated jazz musician who lets himself believe that plastic surgery will help his career . . . A young cellist whose tutor promises to “unwrap” his talent . . .
Passion or necessity—or the often uneasy combination of the two—determines the place of music in each of these lives. And, in one way or another, music delivers each of them to a moment of reckoning: sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes just eluding their grasp.
An exploration of love, need, and the ineluctable force of the past, Nocturnes reveals these individuals to us with extraordinary precision and subtlety, and with the arresting psychological and emotional detail that has marked all of Kazuo Ishiguro’s acclaimed works of fiction.
From the Hardcover edition.

In his highly acclaimed debut, A Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro tells the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. Retreating into the past, she finds herself reliving one particular hot summer in Nagasaki, when she and her friends struggled to rebuild their lives after the war. But then as she recalls her strange friendship with Sachiko - a wealthy woman reduced to vagrancy - the memories take on a disturbing cast.

One of the most celebrated writers of our time gives us his first cycle of short fiction: five brilliantly etched, interconnected stories in which music is a vivid and essential character.
A once-popular singer, desperate to make a comeback, turning from the one certainty in his life . . . A man whose unerring taste in music is the only thing his closest friends value in him . . . A struggling singer-songwriter unwittingly involved in the failing marriage of a couple he’s only just met . . . A gifted, underappreciated jazz musician who lets himself believe that plastic surgery will help his career . . . A young cellist whose tutor promises to “unwrap” his talent . . .
Passion or necessity—or the often uneasy combination of the two—determines the place of music in each of these lives. And, in one way or another, music delivers each of them to a moment of reckoning: sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes just eluding their grasp.
An exploration of love, need, and the ineluctable force of the past, Nocturnes reveals these individuals to us with extraordinary precision and subtlety, and with the arresting psychological and emotional detail that has marked all of Kazuo Ishiguro’s acclaimed works of fiction.

In the summer of 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper.

Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it.
Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.
breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.

Kathy, Ruth and Tommy were pupils at Hailsham. They were tenderly sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe they were special, and that their personal welfare was crucial. But for what reason were they really there?

The Unconsoled (1995) is a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Cheltenham Prize. It is about Ryder, a famous pianist who arrives in a central European city to perform a concert. However, he appears to have lost most of his memory and finds his new environment surreal and dreamlike. He struggles to fulfill his commitments before Thursday night's performance.
Considered distinct from his other works, The Unconsoled was described as a "sprawling, almost indecipherable 500-page work"[1] that "left readers and reviewers baffled".[2] It received strong negative reviews with a few positive ones. Literary critic James Wood said that the novel had "invented its own category of badness".
The novel takes place over a period of three days.

England, 1930s. Christopher Banks has become the country's most celebrated detective, his cases the talk of London society. Yet one unsolved crime has always haunted him: the mysterious disappearance of his parents in Old Shanghai when he was a small boy. Now, as the world lurches towards total war, Banks realizes that the time has come for him ... more »to return to the city of his childhood and at last solve the mystery - that only by doing so will the world be saved from the approaching catastrophe.
Moving between London and Shanghai of the inter-war years, When We Were Orphans is a story of remembrance, deception and the longing for home; of a childhood vision of the world surviving deep into adulthood, indelibly shaping and distorting a person's life.