Book Review – Ten Nights Dreaming (and The Cat’s Grave) by Natsume Sōseki

‘Ten Nights Dreaming (and The Cat’s Grave‘ is my first Natsume Sōseki book and I was so excited to read it. This book has ten stories, each of which is around three to four pages long. Each of the stories is a dream recounted by the narrator, and so there are ten dreams. Most of these dreams have a fantasy element to them. There is also a eleventh story ‘The Cat’s Grave‘ which is a standalone story and different from the other ten. It is about a cat and it is sad and heartbreaking.

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I liked all the dream stories. But my favourites were the first, third and the sixth. The first is a beautiful, poignant love story with a beautiful ending. The third one is about a father and his blind child whom he is carrying on his back and walking into a forest. That blind child – he is extraordinary, he is cool. You will know why when you read the story. The sixth story is about a famous sculptor. It has this legendary conversation :

Narrator : “Amazing that he can just throw the chisel around like that and still get the eyebrows and noses to come out the way he wants.”

Young man : “Oh, it isn’t the chisel that makes those eyebrows and noses. Those exact eyebrows and noses are buried in the wood, and he just uses the hammer and chisel to dig them out. It is just like digging a rock out of the ground – there’s no way to get it wrong.”

I have read this thought in so many places. It was so nice to read the original version in Natsume Sōseki’s story.

I loved ‘Ten Nights Dreaming‘. It is beautiful, dreamy, fascinating. And look at that cover? Isn’t that exquisitely beautiful? Like a classic Japanese painting? I can’t stop looking at it! The book has a beautiful foreword by Michael Emmerich, which is such a pleasure to read.

I can’t wait to read more Natsume Sōseki stories. I should do a Natsume Sōseki month later this year and read all his works together.

Have you read ‘Ten Nights Dreaming‘? What do you think about it?

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