This article examines the intricate interplay between memory and narrative structure in three of Kazuo Ishiguro’s major novels: The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go, and Klara and the Sun. The study argues that memory in Ishiguro’s fiction is not merely thematic content but a decisive structural force that shapes voice, temporality, focalization, and the linguistic texture of narration. Through a comparative analysis of reflective, repressed, and artificially constructed mnemonic models, the article explores how unreliable narration, analepsis and prolepsis, euphemism, hesitation strategies, and fragmented narrative sequencing reflect the instability, selectivity, and constructed nature of memory. Findings highlight how Stevens’s self-curated recollections, Kathy H.’s systematically fragmented memories, and Klara’s algorithmic observational memory collectively challenge conventional notions of identity, personhood, and emotional truth. The article contributes to contemporary narrative theory by demonstrating Ishiguro’s distinctive linguopoetic approach to representing memory as a fundamental mechanism in the formation of selfhood and humanity in modern fiction.  

Memory, narrative structure, unreliable narration, linguopoetics

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