A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick
'Ingenious ... touching, surprising and sometimes heartbreaking.' Guardian
'If you're itching to read a new novel by David Mitchell ... try this.' The Times
_______________
In Tokyo - one of the world's largest megacities - a stray cat is wending her way through the back alleys. And, with each detour, she brushes up against the seemingly disparate lives of the city-dwellers, connecting them in unexpected ways.
But the city is changing. As it does, it pushes her to the margins where she chances upon a series of apparent strangers - from a homeless man squatting in an abandoned hotel, to a shut-in hermit afraid to leave his house, to a convenience store worker searching for love. The cat orbits Tokyo's denizens, drawing them ever closer.
'Masterfully weaves together seemingly disparate threads to conjure up a vivid tapestry of Tokyo; its glory, its shame, its characters, and a calico cat.' David Peace, author of THE TOKYO TRILOGY
One of the Independent's best debuts
Genre: Literary Fiction
'Ingenious ... touching, surprising and sometimes heartbreaking.' Guardian
'If you're itching to read a new novel by David Mitchell ... try this.' The Times
_______________
In Tokyo - one of the world's largest megacities - a stray cat is wending her way through the back alleys. And, with each detour, she brushes up against the seemingly disparate lives of the city-dwellers, connecting them in unexpected ways.
But the city is changing. As it does, it pushes her to the margins where she chances upon a series of apparent strangers - from a homeless man squatting in an abandoned hotel, to a shut-in hermit afraid to leave his house, to a convenience store worker searching for love. The cat orbits Tokyo's denizens, drawing them ever closer.
'Masterfully weaves together seemingly disparate threads to conjure up a vivid tapestry of Tokyo; its glory, its shame, its characters, and a calico cat.' David Peace, author of THE TOKYO TRILOGY
One of the Independent's best debuts
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"The Cat and The City is a love letter to Japan and its literature. Bradley's passion for everything from onigiri to Tanizaki's short stories is woven into this book. Bradley was for a time an ex-pat and his insight into their perching state is particularly intriguing. He is also very clearly a man with a great tenderness for cats." - Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
"Tender, delicate, and surprising, The Cat and The City is a lovely, rare progeny of a meeting between the English and the Japanese imagination." - Amit Chaudhuri
"Like the street cat that slinks through this, Nick Bradley is endlessly resourceful, full of invention, full of surprises." - Andrew Cowan
"The Cat and The City is fiercely vivid, darkly comic and exquisitely mesmerising. Prepare to be transported across a sprawling metropolis; intercepting lives, as culture, history and identity interweave in a novel that will stay with you indelibly. Utterly brilliant writing." - Ashley Hickson-Lovence
"An inventive, clever and beguiling read. With Tokyo as the backdrop, this is a beautifully written novel about belonging and loneliness, about escape and destruction, where the enmeshed narratives (and a magical cat) bind the city together." - Elizabeth Macneal
"In a very impressive, finely observed debut, Nick Bradley masterfully weaves together seemingly disparate threads to conjure up a vivid tapestry of Tokyo; its glory, its shame, its characters, and a calico cat." - David Peace
"Reading The Cat and The City is a rare experience of immersion in a world so complete that you will feel you know Tokyo like a character all its own, and feel homesick for it once you turn the final page. I loved the playfulness of form, the patience and skill of the storytelling and above all, the jolts of delighted and poignant recognition as narratives connected in subtle and powerful ways." - Eleanor Wasserberg
"Tender, delicate, and surprising, The Cat and The City is a lovely, rare progeny of a meeting between the English and the Japanese imagination." - Amit Chaudhuri
"Like the street cat that slinks through this, Nick Bradley is endlessly resourceful, full of invention, full of surprises." - Andrew Cowan
"The Cat and The City is fiercely vivid, darkly comic and exquisitely mesmerising. Prepare to be transported across a sprawling metropolis; intercepting lives, as culture, history and identity interweave in a novel that will stay with you indelibly. Utterly brilliant writing." - Ashley Hickson-Lovence
"An inventive, clever and beguiling read. With Tokyo as the backdrop, this is a beautifully written novel about belonging and loneliness, about escape and destruction, where the enmeshed narratives (and a magical cat) bind the city together." - Elizabeth Macneal
"In a very impressive, finely observed debut, Nick Bradley masterfully weaves together seemingly disparate threads to conjure up a vivid tapestry of Tokyo; its glory, its shame, its characters, and a calico cat." - David Peace
"Reading The Cat and The City is a rare experience of immersion in a world so complete that you will feel you know Tokyo like a character all its own, and feel homesick for it once you turn the final page. I loved the playfulness of form, the patience and skill of the storytelling and above all, the jolts of delighted and poignant recognition as narratives connected in subtle and powerful ways." - Eleanor Wasserberg
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Used availability for Nick Bradley's The Cat and The City