Expectations were high earlier this month when Kazuo Ishiguro published his first book since receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017. Klara and the Sun is his eighth novel, and arrives six years after its predecessor, The Buried Giant.

Major prizes, as all writers know, are a mixed blessing. Despite the anxiety that often attends an author’s debut, this is nothing compared to the pressure established authors face in case later work does not match up to that which has won them plaudits. The history of fiction is littered with one- and two-book wonders, whose early acclaim appears to have silenced them forever.

There is no bigger prize than the Nobel, but with Ishiguro, who has also won the Booker Prize, there was never any fear it would go to his head. He is innately modest and resistant to flattery. This self-effacing quality is reflected in his writing, which is low-key, unshowy, and reflective. As a result, the question ahead of the much-anticipated appearance of Klara and the Sun was not whether it would be up to standard, but curiosity over what direction he would take.

At first glance, Ishiguro’s novels are like fire crackers, shooting off in unpredictable directions. He has embraced post-war political confusion and conscience (An Artist of the Floating World), war-time mystery (When We Were Orphans), science fiction (Never Let Me Go), and mythic early medieval England (The Buried Giant). Arguably his most ambitious and brilliant work, The Unconsoled, is almost uncategorisable. Most famous of all, however, is one of his earlier books, The Remains of the Day. Here, a butler recalls his long years of devoted service to an English lord, and wonders if he made fatefully wrong decisions.

Klara and the Sun could hardly, on the surface, be further from the subject matter of The Remains of the Day. Klara is an Artificial Friend or robot, who is bought to look after a sickly teenager, and who gradually exemplifies the virtues of loyalty, steadfastness, and kindness. Klara’s observational and deductive abilities grow as she learns more about the environment and people around her; in time she appears in some ways to reach a deeper understanding of what it means to offer unconditional love than the family she serves.

In the dutiful butler and the super-obedient robot, a link can be made to those waiting on their keepers’ every whim. Stevens the butler’s dedication to his master seems gradually to have eroded his capacity for love, teaching him also to turn a blind eye to his employer’s pro-Nazi beliefs. Klara, meanwhile, has been programmed with the best of natures, which, as readers will recognise early in the story, does not bode well for her and her kind. At the same time, the people she comes into contact with have lives almost as constricted and limited as hers. In this near-future, there are those who can buy their way to material success, at a potentially lethal cost, and those left to struggle in so-called ignorance and poverty.

The scope and freshness of Ishiguro’s imagination in part explains why he is as popular with younger readers as those of his own age. Many, like me, who have followed him since his first novel, A Pale View of Hills, appeared in 1982, recognise that while the outline of each novel might dramatically differ, his voice and concerns remain constant, a thematic thread running between them all. Despite the quietness of his tone, there is an urgency, a sense of being on the brink of tomorrow. This makes him unsettling as well as unforgettable.

With some, such versatility might be read as restlessness or boredom. With Ishiguro, however, it merely reinforces his preoccupation with what lies beneath the surface of human activity and motivation. His aim with science fiction, whether he is writing about cloning or androids, is to address serious issues and choices facing humanity, as technology expands in capability and reach. Those of his books that draw on the distant or recent past are equally concerned with the way individuals treat one another. Often violence hovers in the wings, a sense of mortal threat that reinforces the fragility of existence.

All Ishiguro’s books have love and devotion at their core, whether explicit or unrequited. Each explores the existential and moral questions facing humankind, in prose that is simple and understated. Its subtlety reinforces his alarming visions of who we are, and where we might be heading.

It is too early yet to know what influence Ishiguro’s oeuvre will have on writers in his wake. At the very least, he has confirmed science fiction as a credible way of addressing society’s ethical dilemmas, persuading doubters that it is not a genre to be despised. His unpredictability also shows that defying publishers’ pigeon-holes is not just possible but desirable for anyone wishing to retain their creative freedom. Who knows where his next novel will head? In that respect, he is always surprising, like Bob Dylan, his immediate predecessor as Nobel laureate.

Interestingly, the young writer closest to him – his daughter – has an entirely different style and manner. Naomi Ishiguro, who continues this literary dynasty, has published Escape Routes, a quirky collection of short stories, and Common Ground, a powerful, heart-tugging novel. Read what you will into those titles, but while she is certainly no clone of her father, she shares with him a bedrock of compassion, an easy, persuasive voice, and an impulse to fathom, and challenge, the way people behave.

(Rosemary Goring is a journalist, writer and editor. Her books include Scotland: The Autobiography, Scotland: Her Story and the novels After Flodden and Dacre’s War. She is currently writing a book about Mary, Queen of Scots, and lives in the Scottish Borders, closer to England than Edinburgh.)

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