Excerpt from Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

'Klara, do you think once we're in the window, we'll receive so much goodness we'll never get short again?'

I was still quite new then, so didn't know how to answer, even though the same question had been in my mind.

Then our turn finally came, and Rosa and I stepped into the window one morning, making sure not to knock over any of the display the way the pair before us had done the previous week. The store, of course, had yet to open, and I thought the grid would be fully down. But once we'd seated ourselves on the Striped Sofa, I saw there was a narrow gap running along the bottom of the grid – Manager must have raised it a little when checking every­thing was ready for us – and the Sun's light was making a bright rectangle that came up onto the platform and finished in a straight line just in front of us. We only needed to stretch our feet a little to place them within its warmth. I knew then that whatever the answer to Rosa's question, we were about to get all the nourish­ment we would need for some time to come. And once Manager touched the switch and the grid climbed up all the way, we became covered in dazzling light.

I should confess here that for me, there'd always been another reason for wanting to be in the window which had nothing to do with the Sun's nourishment or being chosen. Unlike most AFs, unlike Rosa, I'd always longed to see more of the outside – and to see it in all its detail. So once the grid went up, the realization that there was now only the glass between me and the sidewalk, that I was free to see, close up and whole, so many things I'd seen before only as corners and edges, made me so excited that for a moment I nearly forgot about the Sun and his kindness to us.

Excerpted from Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. Copyright © 2021 by Kazuo Ishiguro. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.