Haruki Murakami is set to publish a new memoir exploring fatherhood and his relationship with his late father on October 20, according to bookriot.com.
Titled “Abandoning a Cat: A Personal Story,” the 80-page book will be published in English by Knopf and translated by long-time collaborator Philip Gabriel. The work expands upon an essay the renowned Japanese author originally published in The New Yorker in 2019.
Set against the backdrop of post-World War II Japan, the memoir examines intergenerational bonds while featuring a narrative centred on the author’s signature motif, cats.
Although primarily celebrated for his fiction, Murakami has previously published notable personal non-fiction, including his 2007 reflection on marathon running and prose, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, and the 2022 collection Novelist as a Vocation.
Since debuting in 1979, Murakami has established himself as one of contemporary literature’s most widely read global authors, with his works translated into dozens of languages.