Of the melancholy at the heart of the book, he writes: 'It's impossible to talk about true sadness'. Hiraide doesn't speak much English, and so elects to be interviewed via email. It has already been a bestseller in America and France and will be published in 15 other countries. But his elliptical tale about a cat – who was, he confirms to The Independent, quite real, and did come to enrich his and his wife's lives – is now a quiet literary sensation. Hiraide, born in Moji in 1950 and ostensibly a poet, has rarely been published outside of Japan. Chibi is aloof and temperamental as only the very best cats can be, but his presence gradually draws them away from their desks and into the garden, where, for a time, all is well. They coax the cat into staying, and learn that his name is Chibi. The husband and wife, both writers, do not have children and their marriage has grown stale as they lose themselves in their work.

In The Guest Cat, a slim, 136-page novel by the Japanese writer Takashi Hiraide, a cat one day wanders into the house, and lives, of a thirty-something couple. This year, it is an unlikely one: The Guest Cat, which is neither celebrity biography nor novelty joke compendium, though it does feature another staple of surefire bestseller status these days: cats. Occasionally at Christmas time, there emerges, among the dreck that publishers like to foist upon us, a book genuinely worthy of bestseller status.

The guest cat