A morality tale for the age of AI

Twenty years on, Kazuo Ishiguro's masterpiece feels even more urgent and moving in the world we live in

- Somak Ghoshal

read Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go for the first time when it came out in 2005. At the time, I was a student at university in England and counting my pennies carefully. A brand-new hardback edition, priced at around £20, was an indulgence I could ill-afford. So, I went to my favourite local bookstore and read it over two long sittings under the watchful but kind eyes of one of the booksellers I had befriended. By the time I had got to the end, I had a lump in my throat and my eyes had turned teary, several times.

Recently, I re-read Never Let Me Go on its 20th anniversary—my very own copy of it, I am proud to say—half-expecting to laugh off my early reaction as the emotional excesses of youth. I was surprised, though, by the intensity with which the book affected me after all these years. The overwhelming feeling, this time around, was one of heaviness, not the helpless, youthful rage I had felt at the injustices of the world all those years ago.

In the last 20 years, the premise of Ishiguro's novel has come frighteningly close to reality, or indeed, has been realised in less organised settings. The social, political and economic systems that govern our lives have perpetuated hierarchies that have reinforced the supremacy of one class of humans over others. The idea that some bodies are more valuable than others is hardly novel. The long arc of colonialism and racism has given substance to it, leading to humans being treated as guinea pigs, and acts of cold-blooded crime being perpetrated on them with impunity.