The perfect gift for cat lovers: a beloved Japanese modern classic that chronicles the author's twenty-year bond with her cat, meditating on solitude, independence, companionship, the writing life, and how cats can change our lives.For the last 20 years, Japanese readers have been falling in love with the late poet and prizewinning author Mayumi Inaba's story of life with her[Bokinfo].
INDIE BESTSELLER A Must-Read: The New Yorker * Literary Hub * The Millions * Kirkus Reviews * Shelf Awareness * BookBub "I have never read a book quite like this. [A] profoundly real, specific, moving, and beautifully written story." ―Elif Batuman, author of Either/Or "[A] moving memoir . . . [of] the daily joys and intimacies of having a pet . . . Inaba's portrait of the human-feline relationship is reverential, an expression of devotion." --The New Yorker Mornings Without Mii is a beloved Japanese modern classic: a deeply affecting story of solitude, independence, writing, grief, love, and life alongside a cat. On a cool summer evening in 1977, Mayumi Inaba hears a forlorn cry carried by the breeze off Tokyo's Tamagawa River. She follows the sound to the riverbank and finds a newborn kitten only the size of her palm dangling from a fence, abandoned. Overcome by tender affection, she takes the cat back to the small apartment she shares with her husband and christens her Mii: so begins an ineffable bond. Over the next twenty years, we follow Inaba, a poet and novelist by moonlight, as she pursues quiet, solitude, and a room of her own. Through it all, her cat, a fiercely independent creature in her own right, is her confidante and muse. From the late Mayumi Inaba, a winner of the Kawabata Prize and the Tanizaki Prize, Mornings Without Mii is not just a love letter to companionship: it's a poignant, searching meditation on the forces that enable us to connect, to create, and to build a life.