The Travelling Cat Chronicles: Nana’s account of Satoru

Hiro Arikawa

Nana calls himself independent and bargains for food when Satoru wants to stroke him. The cat’s commentary makes their attachment funny and sometimes evasive. Arikawa gives the relationship a history of practical care before asking us to wonder why it might have to end.

Read this? Find your next book

StandaloneRegularPace: Gentle

Editorial estimate, not an exact measurement

The cat has his own version

When a man wants to stroke Nana, the cat considers what food could make the interruption worthwhile. His imagined answers give us a version the human cannot hear. Philip Gabriel’s translation makes the exchange conversational. Nana’s proud bargaining and readiness to take a morsel let affection emerge despite his refusal to describe himself as grateful.

Care changes the meaning of independence

A traffic injury makes Nana depend on Satoru for food, veterinary treatment and recovery. Accepting help does not immediately settle how he feels about belonging to a human. His inward objections keep the cat’s pride in the rescue scene. Satoru can be tender and Nana resistant, letting the relationship include both their responses.

A journey into someone else’s past

After five years together, Nana and Satoru travel in a silver van to old friends, including a couple who run a guesthouse, seeking another home for the cat. The reason Satoru cannot keep him is still withheld here. The early human strand turns to Kosuke, a childhood friend with marital difficulties. Third-person narration gives us access to a Satoru Nana did not know.

Closeness is not complete knowledge

Moving from Nana to a human friend makes the old friendships worth visiting: each perspective knows a different part of Satoru. The cat’s certainty can be funny because his knowledge is incomplete. Injury, marital separation and the possible loss of their home also make this uneasy company. The humour lets us stay with those difficulties without making them go away.

A small bond carrying a larger uncertainty

Nana’s imagined commentary repeatedly interrupts the straightforward human account. Readers who enjoy the cat’s proud judgments can follow the journey through them; others may find the device intrusive. The opening gives those judgments weight through Nana’s injury and Satoru’s help. By the time another home is sought, their routines already make separation matter, even before its explanation.

Three directions to read next

Sweet Bean Paste · Durian Sukegawa

Choose Durian Sukegawa’s Sweet Bean Paste to stay with the question of how care and acceptance grow between people. Sentaro’s confectionery shop and Tokue’s expertise create the meeting point.

What changes: Social exclusion tests a partnership built around work. The setting stays close to a shop rather than travelling to old friends, and the story asks about belonging beyond somebody’s usefulness.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built · Becky Chambers

Choose Becky Chambers’s A Psalm for the Wild-Built if the unexpected travel companion and questions about need matter more than the Japanese setting. A tea monk meets a robot asking what people need.

What changes: The conversation takes place in an imagined future and begins the Monk & Robot series. This is a speculative route into purpose and companionship, not another animal narrator or a continuation of Satoru’s story.

The Summer Book · Tove Jansson

Choose Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book to keep intimate company and attention to nature. A six-year-old girl and her grandmother spend a summer on a Finnish island.

What changes: Twenty-two vignettes make room for wandering, observation and talk about life and death. Stay on the island for a relationship between generations, rather than following a van through a man’s earlier friendships.

Questions readers ask

Is Nana a talking cat?

He supplies an imagined first-person account and private replies to Satoru. The opening does not establish a world where humans hear all his thoughts.

Does Nana narrate every passage?

No. The inspected early chapter moves into third-person narration around Kosuke, one of Satoru’s old friends.

What gives the road trip its purpose?

Satoru visits old friends while seeking another home for Nana. The reason he cannot keep the cat is a discovery the novel withholds.

Is it entirely lighthearted?

No. The opening includes a traffic injury, recovery, marital separation and anxiety about losing a shared home. Its humour coexists with distress.

Sources and editorial approach

Based on the US, UK and Japanese publishers and PRH Retail’s authorised English proof excerpt, translated by Philip Gabriel. We read the opening and early chapter one through the initial Kosuke reunion material, before the journey’s reason is explained; the displayed text is an advance uncorrected proof. We have not read the whole novel or ending. Interpretations are ours; recommendations use the linked publishers.

Find reader reviews

See other readers’ perspectives. Reviews on external sites may cover other editions.

External site; content may be in English.

Search Goodreads for reader reviews