[2] Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro's sixth novel, takes place in England during the 1990s and follows students' lives at an elite boarding school.

The story explores themes of friendship, memories, and what it means to be human, gradually revealing deeper mysteries about the nature of their world.

The children are closely monitored and are instructed on the importance of producing art and staying healthy; smoking is taboo.

Towards the end of their time at Hailsham, the guardian Miss Lucy tells the students that they are being raised to donate organs to others (like saviour siblings), and it is predetermined that they will die young.

The five of them go on a trip to see her, and the older clones discuss a rumour they have heard: that a couple can have their donations deferred for a few years if they can prove that they are in love.

Attempting to make amends, she hands them Madame's address, urging them to seek a deferral even though Tommy has already started donating.

Miss Emily then explains to Kathy and Tommy that people started making clones for medical sciences and research after the 'war' (presumably the Second World War).

However, a series of experiments where a professor in Scotland tried to create genetically superior clones resulted in public opinion turning against the overall movement, leading to Hailsham being shut down.

Kathy treasures her cassette of the fictional album, Songs after Dark by Judy Bridgewater, which she purchased at a Hailsham sale.

Ishiguro has stated that the novel began with a plot involving a nuclear bomb, but that he then began to wonder "what the 20th century might have looked like if the incredible developments that took place in nuclear physics, culminating in the creation of the atom and hydrogen bombs, had taken place instead in the field of biology, specifically in cloning".

[5] In 2001, listening to a radio broadcast on biotechnology, he suddenly decided to direct his new novel to deal with "the sadness of the human condition".

'"[5] In Contemporary Literature, author Anne Whitehead highlights the novel's focus on healthcare as particularly thought-provoking, with Kathy's status as a "carer" defining much of her adult life.

Whitehead writes, "[Kathy's] preoccupations with professional success and with minor inconsistencies in the system mean that she is not addressing either her own imminent death or the larger inequities and injustices at work," and wonders, "Is 'caring,' viewed in this light, a form of labor that is socially valuable because Kathy is making a positive difference to others (preventing "agitation"), or—given the political resonances of Ishiguro's choice of word here—is it a means of preventing resistance and unrest?

While this novel measures carefully the passing of time, its chronology, we soon realize, is removed from any historical reality that we can recognize".

[12] Louis Menand, in The New Yorker, described the novel as "quasi-science-fiction", saying, "even after the secrets have been revealed, there are still a lot of holes in the story [...] it's because, apparently, genetic science isn't what the book is about".

[13] Sarah Kerr, in The New York Times, characterizes the novel's setup as "potentially dime-store-novel" and "an enormous gamble," but elaborates that "the theme of cloning lets [Ishiguro] push to the limit ideas he's nurtured in earlier fiction about memory and the human self; the school's hothouse seclusion makes it an ideal lab for his fascination with cliques, loyalty and friendship.

[16] Theo Tait, a writer for The Daily Telegraph, wrote: "Gradually, it dawns on the reader that Never Let Me Go is a parable about mortality.

The horribly indoctrinated voices of the Hailsham students who tell each other pathetic little stories to ward off the grisly truth about the future—they belong to us; we've been told that we're all going to die, but we've not really understood".

[20] Mark Romanek directed a 2010 film adaptation of Never Let Me Go starring Carey Mulligan as Kathy, Andrew Garfield as Tommy, and Keira Knightley as Ruth.

In 2016, under the same title, Tokyo Broadcasting System Television aired a TV drama adaptation set in Japan starring Haruka Ayase as Kyoko Hoshina and Haruma Miura as Tomohiko Doi.