Hello, readers! It is Monday again! As it is Monday, welcome to another #5OnMyTBR update. The rule is relatively simple. I must pick five books from my to-be-read piles that fit the week’s theme.

5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook where you choose five books from your to-be-read pile that fit that week’s theme. If you’d like more info, head over to the announcement post!

Title: The Blanket Cats
Author: Kiyoshi Shigematsu
Translator (from Japanese): Jesse Kirkwood
Publisher: Maclehose Press
Publishing Date: 2024 (2008)
No. of Pages: 300

Synopsis: 

Is three days with a cat enough to change your life?

The troubled and anxious of Tokyo are desperate to find out. They all have their problems, and they all want to believe that a feline companion from a unique pet shop can help them find a solution. But there are rules: the cats must be returned after three days, and they must always sleep with their own familiar blankets.

In The Blanket Cats, we meet seven such customers, including a couple struggling with infertility, a middle-aged woman on the run from the police, and two families in very different circumstances simply seeking joy.

But, like all their kind, the Blanket Cats are mysterious creatures with their own unknowable agendas, who delight in confounding expectations. And perhaps what their hosts are looking for isn’t what they really need.

Three days may not be enough to change your life. But it might be enough to change how you see it.

Title: The Cat Inside
Author: William S. Burroughs
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publishing Date: 2002
No. of Pages: 94

Synopsis: 

Originally published as a limited-edition volume, The Cat Inside is William S. Burrough’s moving and witty discourse on cats, one that combines deadpan routines and ream passages with a heartwarming account of his unexpected friendships with the many cats he has known. It is also a meditation on the long, mysterious relationship between cats and their human hosts, which Burroughs traces back to the Egyptian cult of the “animal other.” With its street sense, arcane erudition, and whiplash prose, The Cat Inside is a genuine revelation for Burroughs fans and cat lovers alike.

Title: Confessions of the Lioness
Author: Mia Couto
Translator (from Portuguese): David Brookshaw
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publishing Date: 2015 (2012)
No. of Pages: 192

Synopsis:

Told through two haunting interwoven diaries, Mia Couto’s Confession of the Lioness reveals the enigmatic world of Kulumani, an isolated village in Mozambique whose traditions and beliefs are threatened when ghostlike lionesses begin hunting and killing the women who live there.

Mariamar, a young woman from the village, finds her life thrown into chaos just as the marksman hired to kill the lionesses, the outsider Archangel Bullseye, arrives in town. Mariamar’s sister was recently killed in one of the attacks, and her father has imprisoned her in his home, where she relives painful memories of past abuse and hopes to be rescued by Archangel. Meanwhile, Archangel attempts to track the lionesses out in the wilderness, but when he begins to suspect there is more to these predators than meets the eye, he slowly starts to lose control of his hands. The hunt grows more and more dangerous, until it’s no safer inside Kulumani than outside it. As the men of Kulumani feel increasingly threatened by the outsider, the forces of modernity upon their culture, and the animal predators closing in, it becomes clear that the lionesses might not be real lionesses at all but rather spirits conjured by the ancient witchcraft of the women themselves.

Both a riveting mystery and a poignant examination of women’s oppression, Confession of the Lionesses combines reality, superstition, and magic realism in an atmospheric, gripping novel.

Title: Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
Author: Meryem Alaoui
Translator (from French): Emma Ramadan
Publisher: Other Press
Publishing Date: 2020 (2018)
No. of Pages: 281

Synopsis:

Thirty-four-year-old prostitute Jmiaa reflects on the bustling world around her with a brutal honesty, but also a quick wit that cuts through the drudgery. Like many of the women in her working-class Casablanca neighborhood, Jmiaa struggles to earn enough money to support herself and her family – often including the deadbeat husband who walked out on her and their young daughter. While she doesn’t despair about her profession like her roommate, Halima, who reads the Quran between clients, she still has to maintain a delicate balance between her reality and the “respectable” one she paints for her own more conservative mother.

This daily grind is interrupted by the arrival of an aspiring young director, Chadlia, whom Jmiaa takes to calling “Horse Mouth.” Chadlia enlists Jmiaa’s help on a film project, initially just to make sure the plot and dialogue are authentic. But when she’s unable to find an actress who’s right for the starring role, she turns again to Jmiaa, giving the latter an incredible opportunity for a better life.

In her breakout debut novel, Meryem Alaoui creates a vibrant picture of the day-to-day challenges faced by working people in Casablanca, which they meet head-on with resourcefulness and resilience.

Title: Then the Fish Swallowed Him
Author: Amir Ahmadi Arian
Publisher: HarperVia
Publishing Date: 2021
No. of Pages: 275

Synopsis:

A bus driver in politically fraught Tehran, Yunus Turabi avoids confrontation, but everyone has their breaking point. Yunus has reached his. Handcuffed and blindfolded, he arrives at the infamous Evin prison. Inside, he meets Hajj Saeed, his personal interrogator. As a cat-and-mouse mind game unfolds, and as Yunus struggles to stay one step ahead of Saeed, he must decide to keep on fighting or submit to the system of lies that upholds the power of those in charge.