63. Will Joyce Carol Oates' Cat Ever Finish War and Peace?  episode artwork

EPISODE · Nov 3, 2025 · 29 MIN

63. Will Joyce Carol Oates' Cat Ever Finish War and Peace?

from MEOW: A Literary Podcast for Cats · host The Meow Library

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. Zanche is abashed having read (almost) the entirety of "War and Peace" not realizing that Natasha, Anatole, Pierre, & Boris are human beings & not cats; with just a few pages of the epilogue to go, she wonders if she should reread with a clearer understanding of the characters?- Tweet by Joyce Carol Oates, 9/14/24 at 11:40 AM ESTSince at least March 20th, 2020, literary icon Joyce Carol Oates' cat, Zanche, has been struggling her way through War and Peace; taking naps every five pages, never quite finishing, dismayed by sparseness of Tolstoy's feline-forward content. As of September 2024, Zanche still has not completed the epilogue. To aid her, The Meow Library has narrated the first ten pages of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (For Your Cat), a painstaking, 762-page translation of the original Russian into Zanche's native tongue. Today's podcast is comprised of this narration, with a brief introduction by the author. A hard copy of the book will be presented to Zanche with Oates' permission. This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel. Joyce Carol Oates' latest short-form writing is available on Substack. Her award-winning novels, short stories, and nonfiction works are available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Nov 3, 2025

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. Zanche is abashed having read (almost) the entirety of "War and Peace" not realizing that Natasha, Anatole, Pierre, & Boris are human beings & not cats; with just a few pages of the epilogue to go, she wonders if she should reread with a clearer understanding of the characters?- Tweet by Joyce Carol Oates, 9/14/24 at 11:40 AM ESTSince at least March 20th, 2020, literary icon Joyce Carol Oates' cat, Zanche, has been struggling her way through War and Peace; taking naps every five pages, never quite finishing, dismayed by sparseness of Tolstoy's feline-forward content. As of September 2024, Zanche still has not completed the epilogue. To aid her, The Meow Library has narrated the first ten pages of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace (For Your Cat), a painstaking, 762-page translation of the original Russian into Zanche's native tongue. Today's podcast is comprised of this narration, with a brief introduction by the author. A hard copy of the book will be presented to Zanche with Oates' permission. This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel. Joyce Carol Oates' latest short-form writing is available on Substack. Her award-winning novels, short stories, and nonfiction works are available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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63. Will Joyce Carol Oates' Cat Ever Finish War and Peace?

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This episode is 29 minutes long.

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This episode was published on November 3, 2025.

What is this episode about?

This podcast is a presentation of The Meow Library. Zanche is abashed having read (almost) the entirety of "War and Peace" not realizing that Natasha, Anatole, Pierre, & Boris are human beings & not cats; with just a few pages of the epilogue to go,...

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