Notes on Solitude

A fantasy novel themed on solitude and searching, departure and homecoming, it tells the story of a talking cat and a young man who cannot sleep at night, together searching for twenty-one ancient Spanish gold coins. The book is divided into four parts: Part One, "Paper Whispers," uses a notebook format to establish the protagonist's daily life and hardships, setting off the surreal episode of the cat beginning to speak and the legend of the twenty-one ancient Spanish gold coins. Part Two, "In a Foreign Land," advances in pure detective-fiction form the search for the first four coins, as the protagonist weathers various worldly challenges and crosses wits with characters such as the owner of Bone Street and the father and son at the pawnshop. Part Three, "On the Wasteland," recounts how "I" loses the way and strays onto a wasteland without time, where "I" and a shepherd go upstream and, in a wondrous manner, find sixteen gold coins in an abandoned Catholic church; then a flood arrives, and I drift back alone on a sheepskin raft to the real world. Part Four, "No Other Choice," unfolds an adventure around a tropical island, recounting in a realistic mode the search for the last gold coin and a rebirth ritual under the moonlight. In the final chapter, the writer appears in a new identity five years later and tells the origin of this book. Beyond the main story, several legendary tales of independent characters—a Spanish blacksmith, the sailor García, the orphan Mr. Lotus Root Slice, Kawakami the sheep, a painter and his wife—are told around the same theme.