Abandoning a Cat cover art

Abandoning a Cat

A Personal Story

Preview
This Season's Biggest Deal

£0.99/mo for 3 months + £10 Audible bonus

Auto-renews at £5.99/month after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Get this deal
Offer ends on 28 December, 2026.
More purchase options

Abandoning a Cat

By: Haruki Murakami, Philip Gabriel — Translator
Narrated by: Kotaro Watanabe
Get this deal

Auto-renews at £5.99/mo. after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 28 December, 2026.

Buy Now for £8.02

Buy Now for £8.02

This Season's Biggest Deal | £0.99/mo for 3 months + £10 Audible bonus

£5.99/mo after 3 months - terms apply. Cancel monthly
Summary
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A moving reflection on the author's father—plus a cat!—this is a beautiful short work of family history from one of our most beloved, iconic writers.

Originally published in the New Yorker in 2019, and now presented in a full, unabridged form, Abandoning a Cat is a poignant, self-reflective work by Haruki Murakami.

Here he writes about his father, the son of a priest who might have become a priest himself had a clerical error not sent him into the second world war. Murakami's father wrote accomplished haiku and eventually became a teacher. As Haruki grew older -- as he became an adult and then a writer, he and his father found they had little in common. They were later estranged for twenty years, only reconciling on his father's deathbed.

This haunting personal essay is a reflection on what it means to be a father and what it means to be a son -- on what it means to be loved and to be abandoned -- and also on a particular moment of Japanese history, through the aftermath of the second world war on into the present. Murakami fans may find common themes from beloved novels such as Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle -- but will also be surprised by the raw honesty of this beautiful autobiographical piece.
Art & Literature Authors Grief & Loss Personal Development Relationships Cats
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
No reviews yet