Abandoning a Cat - A Personal Story

<b>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.</b><br><br>Originally published in the New Yorker in 2019, and now presented in a full, unabridged form, <i>Abandoning a Cat</i> is a poignant, self-reflective work by Haruki Murakami.<br><br>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.<br><br>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 <i>Kafka on the Shore</i> and <i>The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle</i> -- but will also be surprised by the raw honesty of this beautiful autobiographical piece.