The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa - 2017- translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai - 2021

The Cat Who Saved Books  by Sosuke Natsukawa - 2017- translated from the Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai - 2021

 Website of The Japanese Literature Challenge 

This is my 13th  year as a participant in The Japanese Literature Challenge hosted by Docle Belleza.  Through this I discovered hithertofore unknown to me writers whom I have added to my read all I can lists.  

The requirements of The Challenge, explained in The Website, are simple. Read one book written by a Japanese author and post a link to your comments on the Website.  The Japanese Literature Challenge opened up a fantastic Multi-Dimensional area of literature to me.  You can also meet others who share your interests and perhaps expand the reach of your website

I was initially drawn to The Cat Who Saved books by Sosuke Natsukawa for a combinations of reasons, I like cats, I like books, the Kindle edition was on sale for $1.95, and it was a best seller in Japan.

 Rintaro Natsuki, a bookish high School student,  is about to close the secondhand bookstore he inherited from his beloved bookworm grandfather. Then a cat named Tiger shows up and insists he assist him in saving books in danger of being lost.  Books need to be read, not just treated as objects.

Tiger and Rintaro enter four mazes.  In one maze we meet a man who leaves his books to perish on a bookshelf, another man who cuts small sections out of books for people to speed read, and a publisher interested only in best sellers. The Final maze leads them into a terrifying confrontation.

I enjoyed this book.  

“SOSUKE NATSUKAWA is a doctor in Nagano, Japan. His first book, Kamisama no karute (“God’s medical records”), a novel drawn from his experiences working as a physician in a small hospital, won the Shogakukan Fiction Prize and received second place at the Japan Bookseller Awards. It sold over 1.5 million copies and was adapted into a hit film in Japan.” From The book

Mel Ulm.