Our score
Excellent
Listen free with a trial
Listen to Klara and the Sun freeNew to Audible? Start a free trial to listen: stream or download titles in the Audible app and cancel anytime.
As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support the site at no extra cost to you.
Klara and the Sun Audiobook by Kazuo Ishiguro— narrated by Sura Siu
Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun narrates a near future through Klara, a solar-powered Artificial Friend purchased as companion to a sick girl, whose keen observation and faulty conclusions make her one of fiction's great machine narrators. It is science fiction as a Nobel laureate writes it: the technology offstage, the loneliness fully lit.
Why the audiobook wins
Klara and the Sun lives entirely inside the perception of an Artificial Friend trying to make sense of a world she can only partly interpret, and Sura Siu's narration is careful to never let Klara sound fully human or fully mechanical. It's a tightrope performance, warmth and wrongness in the same sentence, and it's what makes Klara's faulty conclusions land as heartbreaking rather than simply eerie.
Ishiguro keeps the technology offstage and the loneliness fully lit, which means the audio's success rests almost entirely on tone rather than plot mechanics. Siu's measured, quietly hopeful delivery through Klara's worship of the Sun and her devotion to the ailing Josie is best suited to a slow, uninterrupted listen, an evening in rather than a noisy commute, so Klara's logic has room to unsettle you gradually.
A Nobel laureate writing science fiction from a machine's point of view is already a high-wire act on the page. Siu's reading keeps the balance. One credit, and you're seeing the world through Klara's eyes for the duration.
Already a member? Go straight to Klara and the Sun on Audible
Prefer to read it?
Audiobook questions
- Who narrates the Klara and the Sun audiobook?
- Sura Siu narrates the audiobook edition of Klara and the Sun.
- Is the Klara and the Sun audiobook worth listening to?
- We scored Klara and the Sun 4.2 out of 5. Klara and the Sun lives entirely inside the perception of an Artificial Friend trying to make sense of a world she can only partly interpret, and Sura Siu's narration is careful to never let Klara sound fully human or fully mechanical. It's a tightrope performance, warmth and…
- Can I listen to Klara and the Sun free with an Audible trial?
- Eligible new Audible members can use a free-trial credit to listen in the Audible app. Eligibility and current offer terms are set by Audible.
