If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura

Consequently, Cabbage, his cat, is the only living soul he shares his life with. Our narrator has lead a quite lonely life since his mother’s death as he lives estranged from his father and broke up with his girlfriend many years ago. While the protagonist agrees to separate from objects such as clocks or movies, he finds himself truly conflicted when the devil decides to trade his life against the existence of cats. This strange character will propose to him a simple trade-oﬀ: for each item that the young postman would be willing to make disappear from the world, he will gain one extra day of life. Upon returning home from his doctor’s appointment, our narrator finds the devil sitting on his couch in the form of his doppelgänger dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts. In If Cats Disappeared From The World, Kawamura tells the story of a postman in his thirties who discovers that his days are numbered because of a brain tumour which will cause his imminent death. More impressively, his debut novel If Cats Disappeared From The World published in 2012 has sold more than a million copies in Japan and been translated in several languages which makes it newly available in the UK and all over the world.

At not even 40, this man of many talents has already demonstrated his genius by writing several novels, essays and producing internationally acclaimed films such as Your Name ( Kimi No Na Wa, Shinkai Makoto, 2016) or The Boy and the Beast ( Bakemono No Ko, Hosoda Mamoru, 2015). Kawamura Genki is not your typical contemporary Japanese writer: he is a phenomenon. Fans of The Guest Cat and The Travelling Cat Chronicles will also surely love If Cats Disappeared from the World. This beautiful tale is translated from the Japanese by Eric Selland, who also translated The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide.

Genki Kawamura's If Cats Disappeared from the World is a story of loss and reconciliation, of one man’s journey to discover what really matters in modern life. īecause how do you decide what makes life worth living? How do you separate out what you can do without from what you hold dear? In dealing with the Devil our narrator will take himself – and his beloved cat – to the brink.

But before he can set about tackling his bucket list, the Devil appears with a special offer: in exchange for making one thing in the world disappear, he can have one extra day of life. Estranged from his family, living alone with only his cat Cabbage for company, he was unprepared for the doctor’s diagnosis that he has only months to live. A beautifully moving tale of loss and reaching out to the ones we love, of one man’s journey to discover what really matters in modern life.

If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura