The Cat and The City
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
A captivating journey through the hidden corners of Tokyo, where a stray cat connects the lives of seemingly disparate souls.
In the sprawling metropolis of Tokyo, a calico cat roams the back alleys, weaving through the lives of its inhabitants. From a homeless man in an abandoned hotel to a reclusive hermit and a convenience store worker seeking love, the cat's path intertwines with their stories of survival, self-destruction, and the yearning for connection.
As the city transforms, the cat finds itself on the fringes, encountering a cast of characters whose lives are subtly yet profoundly linked. With inventive storytelling that blends manga and footnotes, Nick Bradley crafts a spellbinding and slyly political novel about interplay and estrangement, exploring the desire to belong and the need to escape. The Cat and The City is a lithe thrill-ride for readers who enjoy contemporary fiction, Japanese literature, and urban tales.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Nick Bradley's marvelous debut novel in stories opens in Tokyo, as a young woman with glowing green eyes asks Kentaro, a Japanese tattoo master, to cover her body with a portrait of the city. Over months of painful, painstaking work, Kentaro is alarmed to see the tiny calico cat he inked moving around. A cat appears in each of the stories that follow, which are set in a variety of Tokyo locales and written in genres including manga, science fiction, and horror. Though the tales seem unconnected, they are subtly and intricately linked. The homeless former alcoholic in "Fallen Words" turns out to be the brother of the taxi driver in "Sakura" and the son of the late author Nishi Furuni, whose futurist short story "Copy Cat" appears as the book's centerpiece. Furuni's story is translated by Flo Dunthorpe, an American whose fellow staffers at a large PR firm also appear throughout. As shadowy authorities clean up the city for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics (still planned here for 2020), Bradley suggests the reappearing green-eyed woman might be a bakeneko, a cat-human shape-shifter from Japanese folklore. Bradley's juxtaposed narratives paint an unforgettable portrait of Tokyo and capture the mix of isolation and interconnection that shapes modern urban life. Fans of David Mitchell should enjoy this clever work, which charts its own territory through deep immersion in Japanese culture.
