Abstract: Agency is a central issue in all of Kazuo Ishiguro's fiction. This article argues that Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun contrasts two visions of agency. The first is a machine-like, algorithmic model, demonstrated by the artificial intelligence robot Klara: this, as well as Klara's story, parallels Plato's allegory of the Cave. The second is a more human vision of agency which is clarified by Hannah Arendt's account of action. Both visions collide over a key issue in the novel, the idea and practice of forgiveness. I argue that this focus on forgiveness and its relation to forms of agency advance a key issue in Ishiguro's fiction. His previous novels suggest that we are trapped in the decisions we have made: in The Buried Giant, this is presented most forcefully in suggesting a chain of retributive genocidal atrocities. The concept of forgiveness in Klara and the Sun begins to offer an escape from that chain.

Key words: Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun, agency, Arendt, action, forgiveness