Abandoning a Cat: A Personal Story

村上春樹最赤裸真誠的自傳式隨筆！從童年與父親棄貓的記憶出發，揭開長達二十年的父子疏離與臨終和解。在二戰歷史與個人命運交織中，深切反思愛與拋棄。村上迷不可錯過的家族動人追尋。

一段對作者父親深切感人的沉思——外加一隻貓！這是我們最受愛戴、最具代表性的作家之一，所寫下關於家族歷史的優美短篇作品。

這部作品最初於2019年發表在《紐約時報》（譯註：原文應指《紐約客》雜誌），如今以完整、未刪節的形式呈現，《棄貓》是村上春樹一部令人心酸且自我反思的作品。

他在書中寫到了自己的父親——一位僧侶的兒子，若非因為一個文書上的疏失將他送往第二次世界大戰，他自己原本也可能成為一名僧侶。村上的父親寫得一手好俳句，並在後來成為了一名教師。隨著春樹漸漸長大——當他成為成年人進而成為作家後，他和父親發現彼此幾乎沒有共同點。他們後來疏遠了二十年，直到父親臨終前才重歸於好。

這篇令人難忘的個人隨筆，是對身為父親與身為兒子的意義之反思——關乎被愛與被拋棄的含義——同時也透過第二次世界大戰的餘波延伸至現在，反映了日本歷史的特定時刻。村上迷們可能會從中發現與《海邊的卡夫卡》和《發條鳥年代記》等摯愛小說中相似的主題——但同時也會對這部美麗的自傳式作品中所展現的赤裸真誠感到驚喜。

A moving reflection on the author's father—plus a cat!—this is a beautiful short work of family history from one of our most beloved, iconic writers.

Originally published in the New Yorker in 2019, 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. Murakami's 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 father's deathbed.

This haunting personal essay is a reflection on what it means to be a father and what it means to be a son -- on what it means to be loved and to be abandoned -- and also on a particular moment of Japanese history, through the aftermath of the second world war on into the present. Murakami fans may find common themes from beloved novels such as Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle -- but will also be surprised by the raw honesty of this beautiful autobiographical piece.