Abandoning a Cat

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.