吾輩は猫である (1905)

Natsume Sōseki's I Am a Cat is narrated by a nameless house cat who has never caught a mouse and has plenty of opinions about the humans who feed him. His owner is a dyspeptic schoolteacher, and the visitors who drift through the house are a parade of pompous scholars and idle talkers in Meiji-era Japan, all of them skewered with feline disdain. It was written in installments over 1904 to 1906, so it reads best in sittings rather than at a gallop. The Tuttle edition translated by Aiko Ito and Graeme Wilson gathers all three volumes and keeps the cat's lofty, rambling voice, which is where most of the jokes live.