If Cats Disappeared from the World, by Genki Kawamura

If cats disappeared from the world
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Especially traumatic moments are a bit like that. The feeling of unreality causes a kind of unfolding. An exhibition in front of the broken mirror of reality. It is easy to understand, then, the fantasy into which this book If cats disappeared from the world.

It may not happen suddenly, but the unfolding appears unexpectedly hours or days after the momentous moment of life change. So when the young postman returns home with the fateful news of his impossible-cure brain tumor, reality begins to turn completely upside down.

There, in his house, the postman meets a reflection of himself. A self that observes him haughtily, as if from another world, from another plane. His reflection openly exposes his near death, but the possibility of gaining a day of life in exchange for making something disappear from the face of the Earth.

The postman decides that the world could continue rotating without mobile phones, and then decides that the cinema is absolutely expendable. and what about the watches? to mark the time there are already night and day. Thus he is weathering his unfortunate fate, gaining days of life in exchange for elements that may become superfluous in his nonexistence.

Until he has to decide if cats are beings without whom the world would be complete. Giving up an entire animal species no longer seems such a trivial matter. What will happen when the cats disappear? And more importantly, do you have the right to put your life before the creation of an entire species?

The most personal aspects of a character doomed to death are intertwined with more general aspects of our consumerist civilization. Fantasy becomes a tool to weigh, it happens to consider a whole lifestyle of modern societies.

Yes, yes, but what? What about cats? Everything expendable up to that moment, with whose disappearance he has gained a day of life, has meant for him a constant evocation of his past, of his life. Even the disappearance of inanimate things such as watches or telephones has meant a critical point for the young postman on a personal level. Everything lost forever takes him back to his past. To pending calls and lost clock times in misunderstanding with the people he loved the most ...

While pondering what to do with the cats, the protagonist finds a letter from his mother, and in it he may discover the comfort with which to face all his decisions, free from the noise and hubbub of his confused thoughts.

An interesting short novel full of a kind of existential fantasy, with a certain evocative point to the novel Life of Pi. So you know: quick read and suggestive ending, surprising.

You can buy the book If cats disappeared from the world, the novel by Japanese author Genki Kawamura, here:

If cats disappeared from the world
Click book
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