I Am a Cat
by Natsume Soseki
A cat sizes up the humans and is not impressed.
For you if
you like your social satire narrated by an unimpressed house cat.
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A stray cat moves into the house of Mr. Sneaze, a middle-school English teacher, and watches the humans with a dry, unimpressed eye. Soseki published it in installments in 1905-06, in the middle of Japan's rush to modernize, and the cat's targets are the pretensions of the new educated class: their jargon, their money worship, their borrowed Western manners. Rambling, funny and sharper than it looks.
Where This Book Lives
Pass with note. Episodic and meandering by design, with a slow start; translations differ a lot (Aiko Ito and Graeme Wilson for Tuttle, Meredith McKinney for Penguin), so pick an edition on purpose. Soseki is a canonical Meiji-era author with no documented concerns, though some period remarks about women and the poor are of their time. Close relatives: Candide, The Good Soldier Svejk and Dead Souls (suggested 10-20).
Related Viewing
Shares a topic or setting with this book, or several of its themes.
I Am Not a Witch(2017)
dir. Rungano Nyoni
Same themes: Community, Inequality
A child is tagged a witch. Tourists take photos.
In a Zambian village, an eight-year-old girl is accused of witchcraft after a small incident and sent to a government-run witch camp, where the women are tied to spools of white ribbon so they can't fly away. She is made a tourist attraction and a courtroom tool. A deadpan satire from a Zambian-Welsh director about how belief becomes an industry.
Why it’s here: It's what a society does to someone who is made a spectacle. What's punk is the dry comedy of bureaucracy and tourism turning a child into an exhibit. What's pedagogical is the question it leaves: who benefits from the story? Pairs with Things Fall Apart, The Famished Road and Satanic Verses (suggested 10-22). Note: dark comedy, with a child at the center and no easy rescue; Nyoni drew on real witch camps in Ghana. English, Bemba and Nyanja with subtitles.
Where to watch: Free: Kanopy and Hoopla (library card), Tubi, Plex, Pluto and Roku Channel (with ads); subscription MUBI, AMC+; rent $1.99-3.99 (JustWatch US, checked 2026-11-05). Verify.Letterboxd ↗
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