Mornings Without MII by Inaba, Mayumi

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

"[A] moving memoir . . . [of] the daily joys and intimacies of having a pet . . . Inaba's portrait of the human-feline relationship is reverential, an expression of devotion." --The New Yorker

Mornings Without Mii is a beloved Japanese modern classic: a deeply affecting story of solitude, independence, writing, grief, love, 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: Mayumi Inaba
Publisher: Fsg Originals
Published: 02/25/2025
Pages: 192
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.33lbs
Size: 7.52h x 5.11w x 0.54d
ISBN: 9780374614782

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 12/09/2024
Kirkus Reviews 01/15/2025
Booklist 02/01/2025 pg. 14
BookPage 03/01/2025
Shelf Awareness 03/15/2025

About the Author

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.