Title: If Cats Disappeared from the World
Author: Genki Kawamura
Type: Fiction
Page Count: 202
Rating: 4/5
This book has received a lot of praise from a lot of different places, and there’s good reason for that. It’s essentially a Japanese literary fiction novel in which someone discovers that they’re about to die and is offered a deal from the devil whereby they can gain a little extra life in exchange for things disappearing from the world.
So I guess it’s kind of magical realism, but with a sort of philosophical leaning in which the reader is invited along to consider what exactly makes a person a human being. It’s exactly the kind of thing I was looking for because I’ve been feeling pretty philosophical in general of late.
It’s also a pretty good read to help you to come to terms with your own mortality, and it asks the question of what you’d be willing to trade for an extra day of life, along with what you’d do to ensure that the extra life was possible. Would you make a deal with the devil? I’m scared of dying and I probably wouldn’t.
