This is a beautiful short work of family history from one of our most beloved, iconic writers. Originally published in the New Yorker, 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. Murakamis 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 fathers deathbed.
