A History of the Cat in Nine Chapters or Less - Softcover

Shivani, Fu

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1936196964 ISBN 13: 9781936196968

Publisher: C&R Press, 2019

Synopsis

What is it like for a cat to observe and live with humans? How does a cat experience human beings in their various modes of existence, from early sedentary societies at the dawn of civilization to the throes of empire in ancient Rome or Victorian England, or in cultures that seem dark and mysterious to us now, such as the medieval witch-hunts or Egypt in the period when felines were worshipped? With its wise, wily, and wonderfully perceptive protagonist—the cat who ceaselessly adapts himself, changing his voice, demeanor, and ideals according to the temper of the times—this novel is a brief history of human civilization as much as it is a history of feline evolution. The cat is the most fascinating of human companions because it opens up a surreal window into the human soul. The protagonist of this crafty, seductive, mesmerizing novel convinces you that there are many more windows into understanding the nature of our own perception—via the cat’s all-knowing gaze—than we ever realized. What we think of as history is often reduced to stale chronology and progressive linearity; but the cat in this novel provides a profoundly circular, unknowable, mysterious dimension to the idea of human history.

About this title

About the Author

Fu Shivani is the author of the fiction book A HISTORY OF THE CAT IN NINE CHAPTERS OR LESS (C&R Press, 2019), translated by Anis Shivani.

Anis Shivani is the translator of the fiction book A HISTORY OF THE CAT IN NINE CHAPTERS OR LESS (C&R Press, 2019) by Fu Shivani.

Review

The eight chapters of A History of the Cat in Nine Chapters or Less are a raconteur orange cat’s time-traveling tale (the orange cat who’s sometime black, sometimes white, sometimes orange). He’s the dreamer and is the dream of the master. He fragments as an adventurer through time/village space. There is food; there are wars; there are owners (“How many owners can a being have in a single lifetime?”). There are modes of transport—chariots, trains, boats, and witches’ broomsticks. Though often on our laps, the cat is on his own, even as he’s in our minds. The brilliant, courageous cat, with the voice of a poet (not a pet) and the brush stroke of a painter, permits us to accompany him where no biped has trodden. A genuine treat!
— Martine Bellen, author of Tales of Murasaki and Other Poems, This Amazing Cage of Light: New and Selected Poems, and Moon in the Mirror: A Monodrama Opera

This is a delightful lyrical journey into the heart and history of what it means to be a cat.
— David Grimm, author of Citizen Canine: Our Evolving Relationship with Cats and Dogs, and online news editor of Science

I love cats, but can’t live with them as they are stay-at-homes (well, some may be stray-from-homes) and I travel too much. But I can travel with and love the nomadic, Odyssean cat—a strange cross between Crazy Cat & Kosmic Kat—of this book written with a feline pen held by a velvety paw. Reader rest assured: this cat, even if it can show feisty claws when the need arises, will not give you catch scratch fever. The book and the cat will, however, utterly delight you. I wish it—the book—the same number of lives any cat, stray or literary has: at least nine. 
— Pierre Joris, author of Barzakh: Poems 2000-2012, Breathturn into Timestead: The Complete Later Poetry of Paul Celan, and (with Jerome Rothenberg) Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry

About this edition

• Publisher: C&R Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1936196964
• ISBN 13: 9781936196968
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 218