'One of the greatest European prose writers' Philip RothIn the autumn of 1965, Bohumil Hrabal bought a weekend cottage in the countryside east of Prague. There, until his death, he tended to an ever-growing, unruly community of cats. This is his confessional, tender and shocking meditation on the joys and torments of his life with them; how he became increasingly overwhelmed by the demands of the things he loved, even to the brink of madness.'Dark and strange ... It begins with warmth and fluffiness, but soon descends into Dostoevskian horror' Daily Telegraph'The Czech master exposed the animal within us' New Yorker