I Am a Cat

Natsume Sōseki · 1905 CE · Novel · Japanese · Modernist

A nameless kitten takes up residence with a dyspeptic Tokyo schoolmaster and reports on the household: the master's failed watercolours and worse stomach, the aesthete Meitei's inventions, a neighbour's campaign over his daughter. Nothing much happens and the cat has opinions about all of it. Sōseki's first fiction, written at thirty-eight while still teaching English, and the book that made him Meiji Japan's leading novelist.

Open I Am a Cat in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Lineage

• influenced by ↑ The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
  Laurence Sterne · 1759 CE · Novel

Attributes

Closest analogues

• Ferdydurke
  Witold Gombrowicz · 1937 CE · Novel

  66% · 14 shared
  NovelSatireComedyIndividual vs SocietyAppearance vs RealityModernistTricksterWise FoolEverymanEpisodicThe Housevs SocietySatiricalIronic
• The Scholars
  Wu Jingzi · 1750 CE · Novel

  65% · 13 shared
  NovelSatireComedyIndividual vs SocietyAppearance vs RealityTricksterWise FoolEverymanEpisodicThe Feastvs SocietySatiricalIronic
• Frau Jenny Treibel
  Theodor Fontane · 1892 CE · Novel

  65% · 13 shared
  NovelSatireComedyAppearance vs RealityTraditionTricksterEverymanThe HouseThe FeastThe Gardenvs SocietySatiricalIronic
• Bartholomew Fair
  Ben Jonson · 1614 CE · Play

  65% · 12 shared
  SatireComedyIndividual vs SocietyAppearance vs RealityTricksterWise FoolEverymanEpisodicThe Feastvs SocietySatiricalComic
• The Japanese Family Storehouse
  Ihara Saikaku · 1688 CE · Short Story

  62% · 13 shared
  SatireComedyTraditionTricksterWise FoolEverymanEpisodicThe Housevs SocietySatiricalComicIronicJapanese
• The Ponder Heart
  Eudora Welty · 1954 CE · Novel

  62% · 13 shared
  NovelSatireComedyIndividual vs SocietyAppearance vs RealityTricksterWise FoolEverymanThe Housevs SocietySatiricalComicIronic