Sosuke Natsukawa

Natsukawa practises medicine in Nagano and writes around it, which is roughly how The Cat Who Saved Books came about. A boy inherits his grandfather's second-hand bookshop, a talking tabby turns up, and the two walk through a series of labyrinths confronting people who hoard books, speed-read them or cut them down without loving any of them. It is a short polemic about reading, dressed as a fable. The book sold heavily in Japan before Louise Heal Kawai's English translation reached a wider readership in 2021. His earlier medical novels are well regarded at home and largely untranslated.