by Soseki Natsume
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Product Description
Written over the course of 1904-6, Soseki’s comic masterpiece, I Am a Cat, satirizes the follies of upper-middle-class Japanese society during the Meiji era. With acerbic wit and sardonic perspective, it follows the whimsical adventures of a world-weary stray kitten who comments on the follies and foibles of the people around him.
The New Yorker called it "a nonchalant string of anecdotes and wisecracks, told by a fellow who doesn't have a name, and has never caught a mouse, and isn't much good for anything except watching human beings in action..."
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 An amusing look modernizing Japan through a cat's eyes, 2008-02-04
Contemporary social issues have always been tackled by Japanese novelists, notably Natsume Sôseki (1867-1917), who exemplified his mastery doing just that in the short story form. In I Am A Cat, he personified a stray cat, mundanely observing the lives of ordinary people in a society rank with hierarchy. The cat sips milk, flirts with the neighborhood female feline, but also spends exorbitant amounts of time quietly pondering the tiny tragedies of bipedal giants looming above - from the tatters in his owner's coattails to a houseguest's mindless aping of Western customs. In my opinion, this book is best enjoyed in bite-sized morsels, one vignette at a time, as it was originally written in installments.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 I am a Cat, 2008-01-08
I purchased this book as a Christmas gift for our son. He was very impressed with it - he felt he learned a lot about the culture from it.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Name this cat!, 2007-09-14
Amazingly funny satire from the point of view of a cat in Meiji Japan (1905-6). Supremely educational, and hilarious as well.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
I Am a Cat: Three Volumes in One, 2007-06-08
Delightful! I really enjoyed this book! A fascinating tour of another time and another culture. A work of genius.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Wonderful, 2006-11-24
I bought the three volume set of this book in 1994 and found it mildly amusing.
Now that I'm in academia, I find this book hilarious. It is a fine sendup of pretentious intellectualism--and though there are specifically Japanese references, the humor is universal. Or rather, university-al.
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