They begin to take joy in small pleasures as the cat, always on its own terms, slips between their neighbors’ home and theirs and even explore options to remain in Chibi’s life when they’re told they must find a new place to live. A more extreme example entails the wife in the story getting upset with the cat (after being bitten) and discarding the cat bed, toys, etc; but then suddenly all is fine and the cat is back (without any author explanation). Everything timed to the rhythm of illumination and concealment” - in a chapter almost entirely devoted to windows. The cat of the title is one of those with which many of us are familiar: the cat that actually belongs to someone else, but comes to our place for more food and to take a few extra naps. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.

The couple know their tenure in the cottage will come to an end in a few months as the old couple in the big house are becoming frail and the estate will be put on the market to be bulldozed and turned into flats. Not much happens in the book but it is very evocative and I felt a sense of loss when it was finished. Meanwhile, the couple – childless and with the narrator not especially fond of cats to begin with – find themselves adopted by the animal. The novel brims with new small joys and many moments of staggering poetic beauty, but then something happens…. A bestseller in France and winner of Japan’s Kiyama Shohei Literary Award, The Guest Cat, by the acclaimed poet Takashi Hiraide, is a subtly moving and exceptionally beautiful novel about the transient nature of life and idiosyncratic but deeply felt ways of living.Hiraide has written numerous books of poetry and several books of genre-bending essays, including one on poetics and baseball. Perhaps some readers were enticed by the understated but beautiful cover and the papyrus-like paper.

Después de jugar hasta el agotamiento, Chibi adquirió la costumbre de volver a entrar en el pabellón para descansar un rato. Christopher Hitchens observes: ‘Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. A u životu bračnog para iz knjige, mačka Čibi je upravo najsnažniji simbol jednog kratkog perioda u kom su se usudili da neke stvari u svom životu prihvate kao takve, da oko njih oblikuju svoj život, da se usude da budu srećni i da im bude u tim izabranim navikama ugodno.When she began to sleep on the sofa--like a talisman curled gently in the shape of a comma and dug up from a prehistoric archaeological site--a deep sense of happiness arrived, as if the house itself had dreamed this scene.