Mornings Without MII - Paperback

by Mayumi Inaba (Author), Ginny Tapley Takemori (Translator)

Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by Literary Hub, a Most Anticipated Book of the Winter by The Millions, and a Best Book of the Month by Kirkus Reviews

"I have never read a book quite like this . . . Profoundly real, specific, moving, and beautifully written." ―Elif Batuman, author of Either/Or

A beloved Japanese modern classic: a meditation on solitude, independence, writing, and life alongside a cat.

On a cool summer evening in 1977, Mayumi Inaba hears a forlorn cry carried by the breeze off Tokyo's Tamagawa River. She follows the sound to the riverbank and finds a newborn kitten only the size of her palm dangling from a fence, abandoned. Overcome by tender affection, she takes the cat back to the small apartment she shares with her husband and christens her Mii: so begins an ineffable bond.

Over the next twenty years, we follow Inaba, a poet and novelist by moonlight, as she pursues quiet, solitude, and a room of her own. Through it all, her cat, a fiercely independent creature in her own right, is her confidante and muse.

From the late Mayumi Inaba, a winner of the Kawabata Prize and the Tanizaki Prize, Mornings Without Mii is not just a love letter to companionship: it's a poignant, searching meditation on the forces that enable us to connect, to create, and to build a life.

Author Biography

Mayumi Inaba (1950-2014) was a prizewinning novelist and poet. Her works include The Sea Staghorn and To the Peninsula, for which she won the Kawabata Yasunari Prize and the Tanizaki Prize.

Ginny Tapley Takemori has translated fiction by more than a dozen early-modern and contemporary Japanese writers. Her translation of Sayaka Murata's Akutagawa Prize-winning novel Convenience Store Woman was one of The New Yorker's best books of 2018, was Foyles Book of the Year 2018, and was short-listed for the Indies Choice Award and Best Translated Book Award.