Book publication is story of cooperation

Klara and the Sun is a science fiction story told from the point of view of an "Artificial Friend", a robot created to "prevent teenagers from becoming lonely", Ishiguro explains in a video message to Chinese readers.

Although she finds the human world sometimes filled with fear and darkness, "Klara's own vision remains like that of a small child, filled with hope and trust in the presence of goodness", the 66-year-old writer says in the video clip recorded at his home in London."She asks questions like 'why do human beings become lonely?' And 'what do human beings mean by the word love?'"

The author went on to introduce his new novel as "positioned somewhere halfway between" his two previous books, Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day.

The English book is already a New York Times best-seller, and Maureen Corrigan of National Public Radio in the United States praised Klara and the Sun as "one of the most affecting and profound novels Ishiguro has written". She called the novel "a masterpiece that will make you think about life, mortality, the saving grace of love: in short, the all of it".

At the reading event in Shanghai, locally based novelist Xiao Bai praised Klara as "the best creation of the author", and marveled at how Ishiguro built up the tension between the innocent altruistic faith of a robot girl and the sophisticated doubts of the writer.