The cat and the city

Tokyo is the largest prison in the world - thirty million inhabitants. And yet they have a chance.

In an anthill densely covered with skyscrapers, one cannot find happier horizons, and so one often lives there as a loner, a desperado or a wreck. But when a certain green-eyed calico cat, portrayed by a sought-after tattoo artist on a girl's skin, slips off a customer's back and begins to weave through the Japanese metropolis like a tramp, a bigger commotion erupts in Nick Bradley's ingeniously spun short story strip than Shinjuku Avenue. The selfless beast brings the Tokyoites together to pick up the broken threads, and takes on more than nine proverbial lives. A homeless man sleeping in an abandoned capsule hotel, a linguist lost in translation and in herself, a young man lost in the virtual, macho crossed by belt production, even a burnt-out detective and other human magicians get a chance to feel freedom again thanks to an extraordinary micka, ...that the magical animal exudes.

This little club of Tokyo misfits will delight fans of the magical poetics of Haruki Murakami and David Mitchell. It will also delight lovers of cats, who have been weaving our stories silkily for centuries.